Alex
by To die upon a kiss
Summary: Have you ever wondered why Ian would give custody of his nephew to MI6? This story follows an Alex who has made a different choice - one that changes everything - as he tries to escape Alan Blunt and others who would use him. Maybe pairings. On forever HIATUS.
1. Carnal Noises and Funeral Voices

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual locales, events, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Or it's not, and this is completely true.

Kiss, To Die Upon A.

Alex / by To Die Upon a Kiss

* * *

Chapter One- Carnal Noises & Funeral Voices

(When the doorbell rings at three o'clock in the morning, it's never good news.)

Alex Rider was not woken by the first chime. He had, in fact, been awake for hours, listening to his uncle's housekeeper shagging the plumber in the next room. It wasn't so much listening, mind you, as unintentionally overhearing, for the complex's sheetrock walls had been built with no regard for aural abstinence.

Nor had the supposedly tamper proof windows been created to withstand a young boy with escape on his mind and a miniature screwdriver tucked behind his wallpaper.

Escape, as it often was, was on his mind tonight, and he leaned out the window handily placed beside his single bed, and stared out at the lights of the city. Despite it being only April and rainy as hell, hot undertones in the wind promised what was sure to be a scorching spring. As he breathed in a lungful of smoggy city air, he glanced at the glittering buildings, iniquitous palaces of light outlined against the charcoal sky, and longed to be high.

Through this orifice, he could see in the distance the lights of South Kensington, Belgravia; if he looked farther he imagined that he could see the Gardens, and perhaps even as far as Mayfair.

He thought of dancing, of drinking, and larking about London in the wee hours of the night, laughing until he could breathe no more. He also thought that even a spot of ear-bashing drum n' bass, which he _despised, _would be infinitely preferable to the sounds emanating from next door.

Jack's beau continued his pounding and Alex began beating his head rhythmically against the glass. He glanced at the digital alarm clock on the bedside table; 2:30, it read, and that meant that in thirty minutes he was going to lose his social status.

Alex sighed heavily. He was supposed to have met Tom and James at midnight to charter transportation for the gigantic do that Colin had planned for this morning.

Colin Mitchell topped Brookland's social ladder by dint of wealth, good humor, and possession of psychotropics, but mostly because he graciously shared the latter at the gigantic parties that he had practically every month. He was very generous with his invitations inside the barrier of his own year, extending them to practically everyone his age, but less so with those in other forms.

It was a rare occasion that he took interest in a younger student, but after the school football team's success in the Vaughan/ Brookland game earlier this month, for which Alex had chiefly been responsible, he had come up to the three sweating strikers and extended his congratulations to the center forward. That day he had invited the third former and his two striker friends to sit at his table during lunch and since then had taken all three of them under his wing, sharing with them his gossip and (so far unsuccessfully) his fags. Then, on Thursday, he had announced plans for a "blowout at his" in the wee hours of Saturday morning. It was one of those "be there or be square" affairs, the kind of event at which couples were made and broken; it would no doubt be discussed ten years later at their college reunion.

Not that this wasn't absolutely normal, even expected of a Mitchell; his soirees were legendary for their extreme rowdiness, which was overshadowed in turn by the amount of debauched behavior that occurred among his guests. Many an inebriated minor had had to be rescued from stumbling into the four-way traffic on Tregunter Road and Boltons Place. Perhaps the most impressive part of it was that, although their arrest records were as long as the Mitchells' bills at the end of the night, none of Colin's attendees were ever convicted of anything.

This party was forecast to be one for the books, though: when the usual shipment of port and poppers had come in from Colin's brother, it had included the notable additions of several dozen bags of a new drug which touted itself as "herbal incense." With the novelty of a new spliff to bolster the excitement, Colin could hardly help inviting everyone who asked, and with the guest list swollen to almost a hundred, missing this fete promised to be –boom boom – a fate worse than death.

And here he was, the one who Colin had invited first, trapped in bed because he was afraid that his housekeeper would come find him before she fell asleep. It rankled to imagine that right now, short, scrawny Tom and gangly-framed James were probably having a ball while he, Alex, was the one at home in bed, being made by proxy to join in with his housekeeper's shagging.

At that moment, the doorbell rang. He heard, vaguely, the smash of china and a suppressed swearword; he listened to Jack's tear around her bedroom, her whispered entreaties for her lover to _stay upstairs,_ and the dull thuds of one set of retreating footsteps.

He stared, wishing, at the twinkling lights while the noises of a door opening and the entrance of people wafted up from downstairs, and, even without overhearing the words themselves, he knew from their grim intonation what they meant. It had been bound to happen sometime.

"Damn," Alex muttered.

He closed his eyes and let the blank feeling wash over him.

* * *

It was only hours later, sitting in the studio, watching as the grey light of morning bled through the West London streets, that Alex tried to make sense of what had happened. His uncle, Ian Rider, was dead, and not by the hand of an assassin. The truth was infinitely more banal and made it that much more painful.

Driving home, Ian Rider's car had been involved in a traffic accident with a shipping lorry on an Old Street roundabout. He had probably died almost instantly, they said, of massive head trauma, vessels being burst in the brain, but the chain of events was not completely known; they hadn't been able to extricate his body from the wreckage without damaging it further. The forensic analyst's assistant would ring them up when there was more news.

Alex thought of the man who had been his only living relation for as long as he could remember. He had never known his biological parents: they had both died in a plane crash about three months after he was born. He had been raised by his father's brother – never "uncle," Ian Rider hated that word – and had lived most of fourteen years in the terraced house in Chelsea, London, between the King's Road and Fulham. The two of them had been close.

He sighed, remembering the expeditions they'd made together over the holidays, the many sports they'd played, and the films they'd watched. They hadn't been just relatives; Ian Rider had been his friend and his partner in crime. He felt his stomach twist, realizing that he would never again see the man's fist connecting with his face, hear his derisive laughter, or twist his arm up in a half nelson to get his help with his science homework. Truthfully, he would even miss his incessant schooling in the arts of violence.

"You there, Alex?" The housekeeper had come into the room. She was in her late twenties with a sprawl of bright orange hair and a round, boyish face. Jack Starbright was American. She had come to London as a student and had rented a room in return for babysitting and light housework, and either because of bravery or quantifiable insanity, she had stayed on to become the permanent housekeeper, even after nearly being killed after their home was invaded in 2000. She was one of his greatest friends and the only one willing to spaghetti fight with him. In lingering respect for that fight, he did not hiss and snarl at her for barging into his contemplation cave.

"Sorry for barging into your contemplation cave," she said apologetically. "I just wanted to know if you were okay."

He nodded, then asked the question that had been burning in his mind since 3:05.

"What do you think will happen?" she asked.

"To…"

"To the house. To me. To you."

"I don't know. Ian would have made a will. He'll 've left instructions."

Alex heard a careful note in her voice, as if she wasn't sure how much she should say.

"Maybe we should look in his office," he said with the utmost attention to her countenance as he did so.

If he had been expecting an interesting reaction, he was disappointed. Jack merely nodded.

"Yeah. But not today, Alex. It all feels too fresh, you know?"

At the end of that subtext-laden sentence, the sound of a doorbell could be heard and she spun on her heel, jogging towards the open garden door.

Alex watched her go, crestfallen. He'd wanted a chance to go into the office.

* * *

Ian's office, or the "study," as he called it, as if that wasn't totally ominous, was a large room in the house, running almost half its length, which was parallel to Ian's door. It was the only room that was always locked; Ian had allowed him in only three or four times before, and never on his own.

When he was younger, he used to imagine that it contained something fantastical, like a UFO or a police-booth time machine from that odd _Doctor Who. _In truth, it contained a desk, a shelf with books and paper, and a few locked filing cabinets. Bank stuff: that was what Ian had said. Still, Alex had always wondered: what bank stuff was so important that it had to have practically _military-_level security?

The room was a virtual bunker, almost completely sealed off from the outside world. It had no windows. The only door was built like a bank vault's, with a twelve-digit combination. It would have been practically criminal of Alex _not _to have been interested. The office became the obsession of his young life; one of the enigmas in a very puzzling childhood. Somehow, Alex had thought that it was in some way connected to the obscene level of fitness that Ian required of him, the fact that he was training when other children were playing, and the fact that he hadn't had even the semblance of a normal childhood.

Alex had, of course done the natural thing. He had watched, and he had waited, and when the time came (though it was perhaps not under the best of circumstances, and he was ashamed of it later) he used his advantages, and by 2000, he knew.

Ian Rider was no banker; he was a spy for the British government, and he had been training Alex, it seemed, to follow in his footsteps. He didn't know what his purpose was going to be, but if he'd learned anything at all from reading a history of the SIS's Middle East controllerate, he was sure they would be resourceful, especially their leader, who Ian referred to as "the grey man." If he was going to be honest with himself, he was absolutely sure that they would find a way to use him.

* * *

Alex spent the rest of the day alternating between mulling over his boredom and failing to stave it off with pointless activities. He knew that he would have much preferred to go out and meet his friends, what he usually did on a homework-free Sunday morning, but there really wasn't anything for it but to stay: unless he wanted the guests that arrived to think that he was an unfeeling sociopath. By the time they all had arrived, he wished he had the excuse of being smashed.

There were five unwanted, unwelcome guests: There was the vicar of the Chelsea Old Church, who was tall and sanctimonious and seemed convinced that Alex needed to heal his grief through tears. In his holy generosity he had volunteered to do the benediction for the funeral.

There was the neighbor in the house opposite theirs, Mrs. Robinson, who invited herself in at eight, having somehow heard that a death had transpired. She was a natural busybody, and, even worse, had the means to appease this irritating flaw in her personality; she was sister to one of the Elm Park caretakers and could prowl the community to her heart's desire without being arrested. Consternation was apparent on every face when she entered the house.

There were also two faceless and rather dull corporate underlings; an attorney who read out Ian's will and a funeral director whom he had recommended, the latter of which set the date for two o'clock the next day. Alex wondered offhandedly how they would pull it off. Maybe the funeral arrangements would feature flowers recycled from the service before.

Finally, there was the man from the bank.

He knocked on the door at precisely ten o'clock and introduced himself as Crawley, from Personnel. While he gave the usual speech about duty to the relatives of loyal employees and the depth of the condolences that he extended, Alex let it fade to a buzz in his ears and marveled at how truly creepy the man was.

He had the sort of face that one forgot, even while one was looking at it: Alex found that if he looked at one facial feature and then another, he had to make an effort to remember the shape of the first. It was frankly frightening and intriguing all at once, and he amused himself for a good minute with trying to remember the man's features in detail. When the man reached a long-awaited pause, Alex cut in with his burning question: What would happen to him, to the house, and to Jack?

Mr. Crawley smiled and told him not to worry about the slightest thing. Alex would have been more reassured if the man had shrugged and told him outright that he didn't know.

* * *

The afternoon was even more uneventful than the morning. Alex killed a few hours knocking about the balls on his uncle's snooker table, and then felt vaguely guilty when Jack caught him at it.

Sometime around five o'clock, they received a call from the police station; the forensic analyst had new information on how Ian had died. It had something to do with a broken cable tie on a shipment of computers and a badly locked set of doors. The gist of it was that the lorry's cargo had spilled onto the road and Ian Rider had swerved to avoid the boxes, crashing into a guardrail. His face, Jack added, had gone through the window; if his seatbelt had been fastened, he would have had a chance.

What was stranger than the circumstances of his death was Jack's disproportionate reaction. After she delivered the news, she lapsed into a strange sort of apathy that was frightening in its abruptness. It was if the news was so bleak that she could only cope with it long enough to tell it to him. He'd gone downstairs once to ask her what she wanted to eat, but she was gazing blankly at a patch of sunlight on the upper part of the wall and he was too polite to snap his fingers in her face.

She surfaced from her coma at about five thirty to make him dinner, but remained oddly distant for the rest of the day, giving facile answers to open-ended questions and responding with a terse "no" or "yes" to those that were not. She only came alive once, when he suggested riffling through Ian's papers to see if he'd left a will. Her reaction was an emphatic "no", quite disproportional to the question, and Alex found himself narrowing his eyes in suspicion.

"Damn," he muttered under his breath, realizing what was bothering him; realizing what this reminded him of.

Jack was going mad again.

* * *

At nine o'clock the next morning, Alex awoke, feeling remarkably awful considering that he hadn't been up all the day and night before, chowing down E's. He'd tried calling Tom's house phone the night before, but received only a steady stream of (murmured) swearwords; he'd hung up and decided to let him sleep it off. Rings to James and Nick only produced similar results, and Artie's parents wouldn't let him talk as he was revising for an exam, _thanks_, and the connection was broken with a flouncy _"Good-bye!"_ from Mrs. Gerthrude.

Despite being kicked off of the line thrice, Alex managed to glean some important information about the events of the party. According to Simon, who appeared to be the most lucid of the bunch, it had lasted considerably longer than planned. Instead of ending at three, it had continued to almost five o'clock for most of the attendees, and one group of stragglers had remained until ten at night, dabbing up the dregs of the spliff and playing drinking games. It, as he'd predicted, would be a story for the ages.

There had been no fewer than three arrests, two of which had already been retracted, with apologies to the families. Two couples had been broken and refitted, and apparently – Simon had giggled (_giggled!) – _the cashmere carpets in the first floor reception room would need to be steam-cleaned, as well as those in the ground floor lounges and the third floor bedroom. Alex did not want to know what had happened to create such a stain.

He had hung up the telephone with a sinking feeling of _I told you so! _and had lain awake until twelve that night, tormented by the thought of the abuse he was going to get at school. Now he pulled himself out of bed and walked to the bathroom. He looked like he felt, which was hell, as well as a concise description of his day until two o'clock. He spent the morning watching a talk show host whose show timeslot would have been better used in broadcasting a welcome screen.

After sixty minutes of Jerry Springer , he decided he'd had enough and went upstairs to lie apathetically on his bed, which was where he was when Jack appeared in his room, dressed more nicely than he had ever seen her. It was time to go.

* * *

He found himself in a dark coat and cords, climbing into a dark car that had come from nowhere surrounded by people he had never met. Ian Rider was buried in Brompton Cemetery on the Fulham Road, which was a feat in itself, seeing as the service took place with almost no notice, it was Sunday, _and_ it was still football season. FA finals were coming up and Alex knew what he'd rather be watching than a funeral on that warm, lazy afternoon.

There were about thirty people there, most of them complete strangers to Jack and Alex. Out of all of them, he recognized two; Crawley and Mrs. Robinson, who kept waving at him while he stared steadily to her left, pretending not to notice.

A grave had been dug close to the lane that ran the length of the cemetery, and they gathered round as the vicar began the pontifications. As Alex tuned him out, he stared at the turned earth, neatly piled; at the lush arrangements of flowers set at intervals on the two richly laden tables. It was amazing what they'd done with the time they'd had. He had to admit that Mr. Marshall (was that his name?) had panache, although of course he, unlike most funeral directors, had the clout of a governmental intelligence organization behind his operation.

He also wondered who, exactly had funded this; he found it hard to believe that the SIS had a special division of covertly trained funeral directors with…section leaders and handlers. No, he expected that the one who signed the checks for funerals was simply a higher-up; maybe the director's secretary or someone else just below the top. He wondered if his uncle's boss would make an appearance at his agent's funeral; it only seemed right, since he had been the one to send Ian Rider to his death.

Just then, a black Rolls-Royce peeled into the cemetery, stopping with a faint, ordinary squeal of tires that somehow managed to be deafeningly oppressive at the same time, just like the man who opened the door and stepped out. The whole congregation watched him as he walked forward, then stopped.

There was absolutely nothing abnormal about the man, but something about him made Alex's skin crawl. Maybe it was the lack of expression on the face, the dead eyes behind the square glasses, or the color; grey, grey, _grey._

He jumped very slightly and had to suppress a shiver; the man was looking straight at him. He felt Jack's hand clench on his shoulder; he looked up, but she hadn't noticed the man at all and was staring in completely the opposite direction, where one in khaki pants had emerged through a gap in the crowd. Alex looked at the man, too, and suddenly remembered that he hadn't seen or heard any sign of Jack's paramour leaving the house. Very slowly, he looked from Khakis to the bland man.

There was a tap on his shoulder; Alex jumped because when he'd last looked, Crawley had been on the other side of the grave. "That's Mr. Blunt. He's the chairman of the bank," he whispered, and Alex was shocked to hear a strain of reverent admiration in his voice. His eyes traveled past Blunt and towards the Rolls-Royce. Two more men had come with him, one of them driving. They were wearing identical suits and sunglasses, and looked either grim or constipated as they watched the proceedings.

"…A good man, a patriotic man. He will be missed." Reverend Elvy had finished his graveside address. Alex's eyebrows rose so far upwards that they vanished underneath his fringe. "Patriotic" was not the best word to describe Ian Rider. "Dutiful," maybe, or "Loyal." He looked at the Reverend with new eyes. Could it be that the vicar had been told to say something? He didn't go so far as to think that the man was _in _on something: the idea of the ruddy, plump man having a second life in espionage seemed a little too much.

He looked around for Jack and saw that he had somehow missed her in the crowd; she had vanished after letting go of his shoulder and had left no trace behind her. Instead, he saw Mr. Blunt making his way towards him, stepping methodically around the grave.

"You must be Alex," he said. He was barely taller than Alex, and up close his skin looked strangely unreal, as if it was made of plastic. "Your uncle often spoke about you." His voice was like grease – grey grease – and Alex felt his stomach twist. He tried to cover it up with bravado.

"Really?" he said, with just the slightest hint of combativeness. "Funny, he never mentioned you."

The grey lips twitched briefly. "We'll miss him. He was a good man."

"What was he good at?" Alex was just screwing with him now, trying to push the man into revealing something. He faked a look of wide-eyed innocence. "He never talked about his job."

Suddenly and scarily, Crawley appeared where there had been thin air a moment before, as if he was born for the express purpose of showing off his ninja skills.

"Your uncle was the overseas finance manager. He was responsible for our foreign branches. You might have known that," he said, with just enough emphasis to add a barb to the last sentence. Alex responded in equal measure.

"I know he traveled a lot," Alex said. It was just a game now, one that neither would admit to playing. "And I know that he was very careful about things like seat belts."

"Well, he wasn't careful enough," Blunt chipped in with an imperiousness that was final. His eyes, magnified by the glasses, lasered into Alex's own, and for a moment Alex felt like he was under a microscope or an X-ray; as if he was Harry Potter, trapped by the stare of some horribly perverted Dumbledore.

"I hope we will meet again," said Blunt. He tapped the side of his face with one grey finger. "Yes…" he turned and went back to the car, and that was when the thing happened that solidified all of Alex's suspicions.

As Blunt was getting into the car, the driver leaned down to open the door and his jacket fell open, revealing a dark shape that stood out in stark contrast with the white shirt underneath. The man was wearing a leather holster with an automatic pistol tucked inside. Alex's eyes widened; the man quickly pulled his jacket closed, realizing what had happened. Blunt looked at Alex, and it was this point that he realized that it probably would have been better for him to look away. The man narrowed his eyes. Something close to an emotion slithered across his face. Then the Rolls-Royce turned and sped out of the cemetery as fast as it had come.

"Creepy," said Alex.

He found Jack in the crowd around the food table, where she was sitting as if she'd never left. When he asked her about the man in the khakis she became vague and hard of hearing, so he gave up. She was probably embarrassed. They left the cemetery and walked home, forgoing the car because of the feeling of creepiness that it gave both of them. The walk took about fifteen minutes. As they approached the gates of their closed community, Alex noticed a moving van with the words "Stryker & Son" painted on the side.

"What's that doing-" he started, but then the driver's keycard appeared to be accepted, the gates opened, and the van shot in their direction so quickly that they had to leap out of the way. Alex picked himself up off the street, panting out of adrenaline, not exertion, and filled with suspicion from top to toe.

Nothing was said as Jack unlocked the door and let them in, but when they went upstairs, he silently pointed out little details that were different from how they'd been left. A tight feeling appeared in his throat and grew as they walked further up the stairs, while the blood slowly drained from Jack's face.

It wasn't until he reached the top floor that he became sure. The door to Ian's office was unlocked, standing open. He pushed it open to an empty room; the computer, the shelves, the file cabinets were gone. Anything to do with the man's work had been taken. Whatever the whole truth about his uncle's past was, someone had just wiped it out, and he had a very good idea who.

* * *

**A/N: **Habt ihr die erste Kapitel gemochtet? Was denkt ihr über dem Witz mit Harry Potter und Böse-Dumbledore? Ob Alan Blunt Dumbledore ist, dann Bellatrix ist von Crawley representiert! Macht doch kein Panic über die nächsten Kapiteln, sie würden nicht so lang und langweilig. Diese Kapitel ist nur ein Introduktion für dem Aktion und den anderen Geschehniße. Und ob ihr wollt, review my work please or I will never stop speaking German.

Notes in English on the subtext:

Shout-outs.

Shout-out number one goes to _Those Girls_ by Sarah Lawrence, this horribly profane and shallow book that is impossible to stop reading if you have two X-chromosomes.

Number two belongs to _Where the Heart Is, _a currently (as of 11th May, 2012) abandoned fanfiction by Amari Bell which really should have been continued.

Shout out number three goes to Farrar Realty for providing house/apartment listings in Chelsea. Alex actually has an address in my story.

The fourth shout-out, and it's only a tiny one, references _Harry Potter._

The fifth is _Doctor Who. _Keep in mind that this chapter was set before the 2006 revamp, so it was still just this older show that was blindingly good.

Also: this chapter has almost the same number of pages as Stormbreaker's first chapter, which is heavily referenced in this series, obviously. If you have any corrections or suggestions to make, Private Message me.

There is currently a poll up on my profile. It concerns the speed of updates. Please go there now and vote. The poll may or may not influence my decision to update sooner than planned. Remember that more time to write means more quality, as I research everything I do and nothing concerns me more than believability and accuracy.

Final note: I've decided to remove the summary that appeared formerly at the beginning of every chapter, for the reasons that Fanfiction's new and much improved interface includes the summary at the top of each chapter. The original first page will be kept for the first chapter because of sentimental reasons.

**Chapter One of _Alex _was finished on May 17, 2012, not including the minor edits that were made afterwards, the most recent being June 23 of the same year.**


	2. Stryker & Son

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual locales, events, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Or it's not, and this is completely true.

Kiss, To Die Upon A.

Alex / by To Die Upon a Kiss

* * *

Chapter Two: Stryker & Son

Alex swung his bike through the lights and down the hill toward Brookland School.

The bicycle was a Condor Junior Roadracer, custom built for him on his twelfth birthday, and like everything that Ian Rider had given him, it was horrendously expensive. This present, however, stood out from the others in that he had actually used it. It had ten speeds and although it had a teenagers' frame, it was equipped with adult-size wheels so that each push of the pedals took him several feet. He would be sad when he outgrew it.

Pedaling hard and grinning at the lack of resistance that the road put up, he sped easily through the gates of the school; scraping his heels along the ground just to annoy the class monitors, he slid to a stop. He double locked it in the shed, smiling grimly at the memories that surfaced. Still grinning, he went outside and regarded his school with a sort of resigned distaste.

Brookland School was located next to Holland Park in Kensington, and why it wasn't called by the same name, he didn't know. He did know, however, that it was housed in one of the ugliest buildings that he had ever seen. It was a modern, all-redbrick affair, and boasted about being Chelsea's only community-mixed comprehensive school.

Consequently, the students came from all backgrounds; some were upper middle-class, like Arthur and Simon, and others were obviously rolling, like Alex, James and Tom, if their houses were to be any indication. There were a few lower and middle class students, but they preferred to keep under the radar. This was not because they wanted to fall in with the bourgeois, but because administration loved to drag them into the spotlight whenever there was a school inspection or assembly, to highlight their generosity toward _children with less advantageous situations._ Alex didn't blame them for hiding; he would hate to be one of the LEA's pet projects.

There were also, for completely unexplained reasons, a few people who were so _monstrously _wealthy that they could have bought the school, and the teachers, and probably Holland Park as well, if it hadn't been a public property. Colin Mitchell was one of them, and possibly a few of the older boys in Alex's year. Last summer, he had overheard them talking about a trip to Bermuda as they got into a chauffeured Ferrari. If that wasn't a status symbol, he didn't know what was.

There really wasn't anything else to do, so he followed one of these rich students into the school, his eyes on the gold watch fob sticking out of his pocket.

* * *

Alex took his seat near the back of Mr. Donovan's classroom and glanced to the left, at Tom's seat since the beginning of the year. His friend lay slumped, looking considerably worse than Alex felt, which was impressive considering that he'd gotten two hours of sleep the night before.

Tom looked as if the weekend had finally caught up with him. Alex had called all of his closest friends the night before, and had finally gotten through to them at eight thirty to arrange a meeting near the harbor on Cheyne Walk. It had consisted mostly of him ignoring them, as, once he'd seen them in person, he'd found it hard to meet their eyes. If he'd had, it would have made little difference, dazed and bloodshot as they were. None of them except Simon had gotten any sleep since Saturday morning; he'd actually gone home at five, three hours earlier than the others. He'd always had the most sense.

His friend looked in no state to communicate, so Alex was alone with his thoughts; as he tuned out Mr. Donovan's voice, droning on about the Empirical Rule, the words _Stryker and Son_ appeared in front of him.

Alex closed his eyes. _Think…think…_

There was a gun at the funeral. The way Blunt looked at him like he was something to eat. The burglary of his house. Then, finally and most enigmatically, the unfastened seatbelt, about which he hadn't dared to think, even though this idea had occurred to him the moment that he'd heard the circumstances of Ian's death.

The analyst had said that Ian was killed because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt when he'd hit the guardrail; that if he had, the windshield would not have become imbedded in his brain and he would have made it home from the bank.

The problem was: that wasn't true.

Ian Rider was not a controlling man about the things that didn't matter, and he wasn't one to lecture; however, he'd had this thing, this peeve; this _preoccupation _with automobile safety. Especially seat belts. Since Alex was able to understand words, he'd been required to wear one at all times, even when Ian drove them two miles to the cinema. When Jack became their housekeeper, he'd imposed this rule upon her, too. Alex had only broken it once, and that had been the only time outside of training (and that didn't count, because then he didn't mean it) that Ian ever hit him.

There was another mystery, too. If a fatal car accident took place in the middle of London, surely there would be some sort of outcry? But they (Ian, Alex and Jack, now excluding the first) got the Daily Mail and the Times. He had looked over the copies of both when they came in the morning, and there were no headlines, only a small obituary, and in it there were no names given for either the perpetrator or the victim. Alex was sure that MI6 was responsible, but he didn't know why they felt the need to get involved. At first glance it seemed like they were trying to protect him, as his name was omitted from the article as well, but a closer look at the circumstances proclaimed more sinister intentions.

There had been almost no media attention where there should have been a circus. There was no mention of possible indictment for the driver of the shipping lorry, who could have been charged for criminal recklessness in his failure to check the cable ties on the boxes and the lock on the back door. Those were part of his job, _really! _He snorted lowly. You really couldn't expect much from these people, could you?

He shook himself and got back on topic. So: a spilled shipment of computers; broken cable ties and an unfastened seat belt; a fatal accident and one puny obituary. He closed his eyes more tightly and gritted his teeth. This was what he had been afraid of, what he didn't want to admit even though he'd known it from the moment he'd opened Ian's top file cabinet drawer.

The government didn't care about him; in fact, they probably thought he was a bloody nuisance, now that his uncle was no longer there to protect him from people who might torture the truth out of him. In fact, MI6 had every reason to lie, as Alex had known ever since three o' clock on Saturday morning. Entwined with this was the idea that had occurred to him the moment that he knew the whole story of Ian's accident, the one that he'd wanted so desperately to forget.

What if they were lying to him? What if, he thought, Ian Rider had been killed in some other way? That on its own was not so difficult to believe, but if he accepted this theory, a minefield of extrapolations was brought to life. He'd realized long before that he really had no idea if his uncle had died in the way that the police and the newspapers described; he was sure now that they were lying to him.

Could they not have covered up another death, one by assassin? Or perhaps (he shuddered) he had been captured by some terrorist organization and was at this very moment being tortured. Or – and this was an idea he hardly dared think, because everything in his upbringing raged against it – they had killed him themselves.

Not they. _He. _Alan Blunt, the grey man. He'd known it from the minute that he'd seen his face; no one was _that _bland and not sinister in some way. He'd known for sure once Crawley had told him Blunt's position at the bank.

Alex opened his eyes. (_Brain blast!)_ He had already decided what he was going to do. He would just have to look at the car for himself, and for that, he would need the address.

* * *

He passed through algebra, and the rest of the day, in a fever of sickening excitement. When the final bell rang, he waited for the flood of people to ebb and made his way through the halls to the secretary's office, where he borrowed a copy of the Yellow Pages.

"What are you looking for?" the secretary, Miss Bedfordshire, asked. She'd always had a soft spot for Alex that he thought was genuine friendly affection and not lookism or a liking for young boys, so he smiled at her.

"Auto junkyards." Well, actually, any kind of junkyard. He flicked through the pages.

"If a car got smashed up near Old Street, they'd take it somewhere near, wouldn't they?"

"I suppose so."

"Here…" Alex had found the list under "Auto Wreckers." There were dozens of them in London, though, fighting for attention over four pages.

"Is this for a school project?" she asked. She knew Alex had lost a relative, but not how.

"Sort of…" Alex was reading the addresses, but they told him nothing.

"This one's quite near Old Street." Miss Bedfordshire pointed with an elegant finger at the corner of the page.

"Wait!" Alex tugged the book towards him and looked at the entry underneath the one the secretary had chosen.

J.B. STRYKER. AUTO WRECKERS

Heaven for Cars

CALL US TODAY

"That's in Vauxhall," Miss Bedfordshire said. "Not too far from here."

"I know."

_Stryker & Son. _He'd been in this business too long to believe in coincidences, and he'd technically been in it all his life. He would just have to follow this lead.

The book snapped shut.

"I'll see you, Miss Bedfordshire." He smiled distractedly at her, already focused on whatever it was he was going to do next; she knew that he wasn't really there anymore.

"Be careful," she said, and she didn't know why. He walked away down the hall.

His figure disappeared as he turned the corner.

* * *

Alex Rider crouched behind the skeletons of cars, looking out for Ian's BMW among the other wrecks. His bike was propped against the inside wall behind him and he kept looking over his shoulder. What could he say? Bike is to Alex as BMW is to Ian, i.e., irreplaceable. Maybe loving their vehicles so intensely was an inherited trait for Rider males.

He was thinking these things to distract him from the reality of it, which was that he was sitting on his haunches in a junkyard looking for a silver BMW, and that he was bored. There was no chance, of course, of anyone hearing him over the din of the crusher, but he had to remain in his spot for fear that the man in the cabin would spot him and call the nasty-looking guard in the shed outside.

The machine picked up a battered Ford Taurus and squashed it between its shelves until it was no bigger than a rolled-up carpet; it was squeezed through a metal tube and sliced like salami; the slices tumbled to the ground and it happened again.

This had been going on for twenty-five minutes.

Alex yawned, watching as another car – and another – and another – was picked up. He was beginning to regret coming. He had been squatting for almost thirty minutes and his knees were beginning to hurt, the diesel fumes were stinging his nose, and he might go deaf from the noise of the crusher.

He drew a hand across his face, probably doing more harm to it than good, and squinted. That looked like a nice car for a place like this, and especially compared to the ones he'd been seeing…

Alex jumped, and his whole body shook. Oh, God…

There was the BMW; he hadn't seen it before because it had been under the Ford Taurus and the other two cars that had come before it. He stared at it. Its silver bodywork had barely been scratched. Alex got up and unconsciously moved toward it. Now that he was closer he could see that there were some minor nicks where contact with the other cars had rubbed away the paint. But aside from that, it was absolutely fine.

There was one last check to conduct. He walked around the back; hoping, praying for something miraculous to happen; for the license to say something other than what he knew it would. The higher power, or whatever he had prayed to, had disappointed him. The license plate was the same.

Alex drew back from the car. His uncle was gone, but not shot and not mangled with glass imbedded in his skull. The truth was…he didn't know the truth. There was nothing he could do but conjecture, but he had to accept that- that maybe his uncle wasn't dead, or maybe he was: maybe MI6 had captured him, maybe they had paid someone to capture him, maybe they had killed him themselves and none of this mattered because they were going to kill him too, although the part of Alex's brain that screamed for justice and stood up during the National Anthem and obeyed teachers protested. There really wasn't anything left to do but wait, and get the truth from somewhere other than the Bank, because he was sure as hell that they wouldn't give it to him.

He turned and ran for his bicycle, and later, riding home, he was not at all sure how he was doing it.

And then the Bank called him the following day.

* * *

**A/N**: Shout-outs:

1. _Jimmy Neutron, Boy __Genius_. I wonder if you caught that reference in the classroom scene. If you did, PM me and I might send you a preview of the next chapter. Or I might just update early. Early depends on what the results are in the poll.

2. _Stormbreaker_, obviously.

Are you wondering about Jack yet? No? Reread the last chapter and look for subtext. Send me any suspicions via PM.

Note: An LEA is a 'Local Education Authority." I suppose Americans could consider them to be like a school board, if I am correct. If you are one of the LEA's pet projects, you are an _underprivileged student_that they give special aid to because they want to look good. I don't know if this could actually happen, but if it can't, well, bear with me.

This special attention is not given out of the goodness of anyone's heart, trust me; at least in my case it wouldn't be. In an event that demonstrates the _not-goodness _of school board members' hearts, someone related to my school board was recently convicted of embezzling a few hundred thousand dollars from the budget.

This is not as uncommon as you may think, just Google "School Board Embezzler" and look at the results. On the upside, the commonness of this crime makes me more anonymous.

The next chapter is done and over 5,000 words. It is edited for grammar and spelling, as well as syntax.

Tell me if you think I am too wordy. I already do, I am just asking for you to agree with me.

Notes:

I hope you notice one of Alex's less likeable traits. Let's just say that it's one of the prejudices more expected from a person growing up in his financial situation. That doesn't mean that it's okay and not totally annoying.

Alex is also a bit more emotional than the one in _Stormbreaker. _Why? Because he's a sane human being and he feels normal emotions when he finds out things like, for one, that everything he believes is false. Ha; _HPMOR_ reference.

**Chapter Two of **_**Alex**_** was finished as of May 23, 2012.**


	3. Royal & General

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual locales, events, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Or it's not, and this is completely true.

Kiss, To Die Upon A.

Alex / by To Die Upon a Kiss

* * *

Chapter Three: Royal & General

ONE

It was the beige-voiced man again; the Alan Blunt copycat; the personnel manager who wanted to be just like his superior but wasn't quite indifferent enough. The Bank, according to this man, wanted him to come in. Alex raised his eyebrows, glad that Crawley couldn't see him over the phone. _Here it is. _

"This afternoon. We found some papers of your uncle's. We need to talk to you about your own position." Was the man _threatening _him?

"What time this afternoon?" Alex asked.

"Could you manage half-past four? We'll send a cab." This statement irritated Alex's temper, for some reason; maybe he didn't like the idea of being beholden to his uncle's killers (and any way you looked at it, they really were the ones responsible for his death). He said something ironic like "I'll be there. And I'll take the tube," and hung up.

"Who was that?" asked a much more welcome voice. Jack was in the kitchen, cooking breakfast for the two of them, although Alex didn't know how long she could remain like this. It was definitely a problem, one that he couldn't believe he hadn't noticed: Her wages hadn't been paid. There were only her savings to buy food and pay the bills. Worst of all, her visa was about to expire.

"That was the bank." Alex came into the room, smiling to reassure her. She was so fragile these days, and for good reason. He hadn't told her what had happened at the junkyard; it was an instinctual feeling that told him to keep this fact secret from her. See, he was already turning into what Ian Rider had wanted: a spy. She was just a civilian.

"I'm going there this afternoon," he said.

"Do you want me to come?" Actually, having a friendly face there while he was haranguing Evil Dumbledore wasn't a bad idea. He thought this over for a second before he nixed it. No, he admitted, she'd get too emotional and accuse them of something; he could tell that she'd noticed something off about the manner of Ian's death, or she wouldn't have had such a reaction when she heard about the spilled computers and the seat belt; after all, she was rather intelligent at odd times. She couldn't help being a girl, though, and so he decided not to bring her.

"No," he said, "I'll be fine."

* * *

He came out of Liverpool Street Tube station just after the minute hand passed the "three" on his watch. The hour was four, and this meant that overall he'd made good time. Punctuality was necessary when confronting these sorts of people; even if they were covert operatives, they were still bureaucratic. He looked around for the bank, and then he saw it: maybe twenty stories, with a Union Jack hanging above the street, attached to the wall on the fifteenth floor.

It was a tall, antique building, and not far from the station; he inferred that this was the bank, as, upon moving towards it, he noticed that a brass plaque bearing the words "Royal & General" occupied the space next to the polished wood doors. Alex stopped; looking up at the single security camera as it swiveled slowly, watching the street and him. Wouldn't MI6 bother with more than that? No, he amended; they probably had all sorts of hidden cameras and bugs trained on him at this very moment. Accepting this thought with no more than a slight shudder, he went in, unable to fight the feeling that he was going to his own execution.

In an office on the seventeenth floor, the image on the television monitor flickered and changed as Street Camera #1 cut smoothly cut across to Reception Cameras #2 and #3. The man behind the reception desk saw the boy come in and pressed a button. The second camera zoomed in until Blunt could see the fibers in his jacket.

"So he came?" the chairman muttered. The woman next to him shifted in her seat.

"That's the boy?" The speaker had a strange, potato-shaped head and a haircut that, although precise as the rest of her, looked like something a Beatle would wear and not half as good as she could afford. Her eyes were almost as black as her hair. She was dressed in a severe gray suit and sucking a peppermint.  
"Are you quite sure about this, Alan?" she asked. None of the uneasiness she felt was in her voice, but it didn't matter; when someone had worked with her for this long, he was bound to be able to read her in other ways.

Alan Blunt gave her a look. _Are you becoming sentimental? _Then, ignoring her once more, he turned his attention to the screen, and watched the screen. The boy appeared to be asking a question, his lips forming the word _Crawley._ He looked uncomfortable on the leather sofa; Blunt couldn't imagine why; he had personally made sure that its pillows were the plushest possible when he'd checked it in his weekly inspection last Saturday. Maybe it was starting to sag. He made a mental note; _tell Hennessey to buy new sofa._

* * *

Downstairs, Alex was becoming very hot and claustrophobic as the paranoia set in. It was warm in the lobby, although there were very few people to cause such a thing, and so quiet that he could hear his heart beat. The reception area that he sat in now was corporate; faceless; the furniture was undoubtedly expensive but it could have been part of any lounge in any of the world's upscale places.

There was a brown marble floor, a dark wood reception desk, and the ubiquitous clocks showing the times in cities all around the world; New York, Tokyo, Paris and London. He was confused about the second, but he had no idea what it could mean; perhaps they had a lot of Japanese customers. The three elevators in a alcove to the side dinged occasionally, but in total three people got out, and none of them looked remotely East Asian. There was only one camera, an anomaly; well, perhaps the other ones weren't visible. This place gave new meaning to the phrase _"walls have eyes."_

One of the elevator doors slid open and Crawley appeared, wearing the same suit that he had at the funeral, but with a different tie, one in blue silk, with tiny flowers embroidered upon it. He stared at the rather handsome design as the man approached him. It seemed a little wild for a personnel manager.

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, Alex," the man was saying. Alex stood up, finding that, with the suspicions he had accrued about MI6, he was no longer able to speak to the man and he merely shook his head tersely in a denial. Crawley suggested that they go to his office, and Alex thought this was a good idea. If he reacted this way when he saw Crawley, a very minor member of the SIS, how would he react when he met its leader? Alex decided that he would work on his wariness while in the elevator.

He was right to be dubious about the Bank's lack of security. It had seemed impossible that there would be just two cameras to watch the street and the lobby, and he was correct. He didn't notice the camera inside the elevator, but then again, it was concealed behind the one-way-glass that covered the back wall. Alex could be forgiven for missing the thermal intensifier, as well, since it was placed next to the camera, hidden in the same way. Unseen, it was analyzing the heat of his body, turning it into a pulsating nebula of colors, none of which were the cold blue of a hidden piece of metal.

In less time than it took him to blink, the machine had passed its information to a computer that evaluated it and sent its own signal to the circuits that controlled the elevator. If a weapon _had _been found on his person, the elevator would have stopped and foam guns appeared through a retracting panel in the false ceiling. MI6 didn't know this for sure, of course, since no one had tried to bring a weapon in through the elevators yet.

"Here we are!" Crawley smiled and ushered Alex out into a long, oddly-decorated corridor with an uncarpeted wooden floor and modern lighting. Doors were on either side, punctuated by abstract paintings in pastels. He noticed that all of the doors had normal knobs instead of combination locks or fingerprint recognition. _Minus ten on the coolness scale._

They passed three of these, and then Alex stopped. Each door had a nameplate, and this one he recognized. _**1504: Ian Rider**_, in white letters on black plastic. He gazed at it, surprised at how much he wanted to go in, even wrestling with fear over the manner of his death.

Crawley's voice shook him out of his reverie, saying something cursory like "he'll be missed"; Alex wasn't sure what the exact words were, but he wouldn't be surprised if he had mentioned his deep condolences again. The man seemed incapable of uttering anything other than stock phrases; _God_, he thought, _imagine going out with him._

"Can I go inside?" he asked abruptly. Crawley seemed surprised. "Why would you want to do that?"

Now this was just ridiculous. "I'd be interested to see where he worked."

"I'm sorry." Crawley sighed sympathetically. "The door will have been locked and I don't have the key. Another time, perhaps." He gestured again, waving his hands like a magician, with much twirling of wrists. "I have the office next door. Just here…"

They went into 1505. It was a large, square room with three windows overlooking the station. There was a flutter of red and blue outside and Alex remembered the flag he had seen, hanging outside the fifteenth floor. The flagpole was right next to the office. Inside there was a desk and a chair, a sofa, a fridge, and a potted plant; the standard boring affair. Even the prints on the wall were of abstract pastel shapes.

"Sit down," Crawley said, walking over to the fridge. "Can I get you a drink?"

"Do you have Coke?"

Crawley grinned to himself as if Alex had unknowingly used a double entendre.

"Yes." Crawley opened a can and filled a glass, then handed it to Alex. "Ice?"

"No, thanks." Alex took a sip. It wasn't Coke. It wasn't even Pepsi; it had the sweet, slightly cloying taste of supermarket cola. Wishing he'd asked for water, he put it down on the table.

"So, what do you want to talk to me about?"

"Your uncle's will…"

The telephone rang, and with another slightly flamboyant hand sign, Crawley excused himself. He spoke for only a few moments, saying things like "Mm-hmm. Yes. Right away," and then hung up.

"I'm very sorry, Alex. I have to go back down to the lobby. Do you mind?" he said, which was only the most obvious evil henchman statement ever. Alex nodded in assent and settled himself into the sofa, and Crawley left.

Well, this was obviously a trick. Had none of these people watched a movie? Rule number one: when Igor leaves the room, snooping through the lair only gives him an excuse to kill you. He knew what they were up to! Evil Dumbledore wanted to use him for his nefarious purposes by blackmailing him! Sneaking into his uncle's office was just what Blunt wanted him to do.

He held out for one second before pouring his cola into the tropical decorative plant. He went over to the door and back into the corridor. At the far end, a woman carrying a sheaf of papers disappeared through a door; Alex's eyes popped wide open at the flash of her skin under the short skirt. There was, however, no sign of Crawley.

Alex moved back to the door of 1504 and tried the handle, but Crawley hadn't been lying; it was locked. He went back into Crawley's office and walked around the room, thinking. He would have given anything to see the inside of Ian Rider's office. MI6 thought that whatever his uncle had been doing recently was important enough to hide from him. Perhaps Ian Rider kept a file cabinet in his office with the same sort of information that he had at home, except more recent. Maybe he could see what his uncle was working on before he died, or maybe…he could find out who had killed his uncle.

The flutter of the flag caught his eye and he went over to the window, looking down at the street below where the cars were in a jam. The ground looked so very far away; the people looked small; he could just barely read the logo on a BBC news wagon. To the side of him, the pole jutted out of the building, shiny and new and inviting, exactly halfway between rooms 1504 and 1505. If he could somehow reach it, then…

("Go boy. Go," whispered Alan Blunt, watching him from a camera across the street. He could just barely see Alex's silhouette through the gap between the glass and the frame. The woman stared at him.)

"Oh no," Alex said. "Honestly. You can't be serious." He could see now exactly what they had intended him to do.

See, if he had been really stupid, he might have gotten the idea that he should jump through the window above four lanes of traffic, and try to catch the flagpole, but that really seemed too convenient. _No_, he thought, _I think I'll borrow a paperclip from the desk set. Lockpicks are surprisingly common office supplies these days. _

He went out into the hall, and with slight disgust at the atrocity of their security, he pushed the straightened end of the paperclip into the keyhole of Number 1504.

("Oh," said Alan Blunt. "I hadn't thought of that.")

On the fifteenth floor, Alex was becoming frustrated, as nothing was happening no matter how he twisted the paperclip. Oh, he thought. Oh…

He went back into the office and got another paperclip. You had to have two if you were going to pick a bedroom-type lock. If it was a bathroom lock, all you had to do was stick one end of the paperclip in and push, but the knob on this office wasn't that type.

He inserted both paperclips, jiggled them a bit, and twisted, and then he was in his uncle's office.

It was, in many ways, a carbon copy of the first. It had Crawley's leather couch, the same carpet, even the same painting on the wall: some mass-produced art print of pastel shapes.

Alex went to the desk and sat down, after closing the door behind him. The first thing he saw was his face, staring back at him. It was a photograph of him, taken the summer before on the Caribbean island of Guadaloupe, where he had gone diving. There was another picture of him tucked into the frame; Alex, five or six, riding the second bicycle that he had ever owned. Alex was surprised and a little saddened, looking at the photographs. Ian Rider had been more sentimental than he'd pretended.

He glanced at his watch. About three minutes had passed since Crawley had left; there were two minutes left and if he wanted to find anything, he had to do it now. He pulled open a drawer in the desk. It contained four or five thick files, and from the moment Alex took them out and opened them, he could see that they had nothing to do with banking.

The first was marked: NERVE POISONS. NEW METHODS OF CONCEALMENT AND DISSEMINATION. He put it aside and looked at the second. ASSASSINATIONS: FOUR CASE STUDIES.

This was the sort of stuff he'd expected, but looking at it felt clandestine, like he was watching pornography or reading someone else's love letter. There was also nothing current; this was interesting, but it was just homework. Alex wanted to know about how he died (or didn't).

He leafed through the rest of them, seeing topics like counterterrorism, uranium smuggling on the Continent, and interrogation techniques. The last file had a simple name: Stormbreaker. He was just about to read it when the door suddenly burst open and two men walked in. One of them was Crawley. The other was someone he didn't know, an enormously fat man wearing a blue suit.

Alex saw no point in trying to explain what he was doing. He was sitting behind the desk with a sensitive file open in his hands, for God's sake. But at the same time, he realized that the two men weren't surprised to see him here. They had expected to find him.

Crawley raised his hand and Alex saw that he had a gun. _Oh hell no_. "Oh my God," he said, standing up. "No! What the _hell _are you doing?" He backed away quickly, standing against the wall. He held the _Stormbreaker_ file up in front of him as if to protect himself.

"Calm down, boy," said Crawley, walking towards him, holding his hand up in another gesture, this one placating. Alex wondered vaguely if the man had been a magician before he joined the SIS. "Don't do anything…hasty…"

Alex had no idea why he hadn't been shot yet. He had only a stack of papers, and Crawley had a gun: what reason could MI6 possibly have for not killing him? They'd already shown that they could make the death of a successful banker look like an accident. He happened to look left at the window and then he saw it.

Crawley noticed his recognition as well and tried to stop him. A shot went off, thunderous in the small space, but not as loud as he'd expected. Alex threw himself to the side as he ran forward and he hit his head on the window, but the bullet (dart, whatever it was) ricocheted off the frame and sped, outside, starting to fall the fifteen stories down. Alex already had his hand outside the window. He was dangling the precious Stormbreaker folder over four lanes of traffic.

There was a moment of suspended animation as Alex realized what he was doing, not quite believing it, and the other two men stared at how grim his face had become.

"Drop the gun," he said, making his voice low and his expression blank. Crawley paused and Alex raised his voice to a shout.

"_Drop it!_"

Once Crawley got moving, he went quickly. He dropped the weapon on the floor and put his hands behind his back. "You too." Alex jerked his head, urging the other man forward.

"Come here." The other man did, with a slight look of mocking on his face. He was enormously fat and his footfalls echoed loudly even on the carpet. "Here, _sir," _he said. "I suppose we're your hostages now." He passed Alex the gun.

Alex closed his eyes for a moment. This situation was getting speedily and drastically out of hand and he didn't know how long he could keep down the bile rising in his throat. He'd stolen a file from the _government…_

"No," he said, in answer to himself and to the fat man. He couldn't allow himself to think those things, and he also wasn't taking hostages like some terrorist. Alex dropped the gun on the floor. "You." He pointed his chin at Crawley, whose eyes narrowed in dislike. "Go to Blunt's office. Tell him what I'm doing. And bring him here, alone, without any more of his tricks." Crawley seemed unable to contain himself at this fresh impertinence.

"You," he growled, almost choking on his dislike, "You little upstart, you can't just-"

"This isn't a bank," Alex broke in furiously. "You brought me here for what? So you could kill me? No. Shut up. I don't want to speak to you." His rage was confusing his words, making them and his mind less coherent. One sentence stood out in his mind, the one he needed to say. He bit his lip until his head was clear. "Just go," he spat out, waving the paper when Crawley didn't move, and finally the personnel manager slunk out, sheer hatred on his mild face.

"So," said the other man, with a funny little laugh, as though he didn't like Crawley very much. "You really chapped his arse."

It was a protracted and awkward wait in the office for Alan Blunt to arrive. Alex spent it trading stiffly delivered quips with the fat man, whose name he still didn't know, and who seemed rather unconcerned about the whole business. After three minutes, Blunt swept into the room, with a mannish, dark-haired female associate behind him. He looked thunderous.

Then his eyes connected with Alex. They took in his position over the window, the still-unmoving traffic outside, the precarious spot that the papers were in, dangling over the street.

His face changed to an expression that was almost…pleasant, and that was when Alex knew that Blunt was going to try to sell him something.

He sat down at the desk with the woman, whom he introduced as Mrs. Jones, and then he began to obfuscate.

* * *

TWO

The first set of explanations went just as Alex had expected. Alan Blunt was the director of the Special Operations division of MI6, a fact which mildly surprised Alex. He hadn't known, and had had wondered, why, if Alan Blunt was part of the SIS, his office was in the Bank and not at its ziggurat of a headquarters. This explained it.

Alex was largely silent as Blunt went on to explain the manner of Ian's employment, mostly because he was trying to restrain the more savage urges that were pulsing through his veins. Something about the man repulsed and incensed him at the same time, and this wasn't just because Alex had suspicions that he was involved in Ian Rider's disappearance. No, there was something in the way he looked so indifferent when he spoke. The curl in his lip when he pronounced his 'r's.

As he listened, Alex thought about the file, filched shamefully from a locked cabinet during a home invasion. It hadn't mentioned _Iran. _It hadn't mentioned a kneecapping. It hadn't mentioned _torture, _his mind added hazily as Blunt mentioned this casually with a flick of his hand. If he hadn't been standing close to the window, he didn't know what he would have done.

Time passed but Blunt didn't say the one thing that Alex most wanted to hear. He hadn't mentioned Ian Rider's death at all. And then he spoke, and a sense of coldness spread over him, like a trickle of ice water.

"Ian Rider's luck ran out on his last mission. He had been working undercover here in England, in Cornwall, and was driving back to London to make a report when he was killed. Mrs. Jones here is our head of operations. It was she who gave your uncle his last assignment."

"We're very sorry to have lost him, Alex." Mrs. Jones spoke for the first time. She didn't sound very sorry at all.

"How did he die?" Blunt grimaced and beckoned to Jones, who held out a briefcase. "_How did he die?" _he demanded.

"Have you heard," said Blunt, opening the case and withdrawing a photograph, "of a man named Herod Sayle?"

And then Alex entered the Twilight Zone.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, he was staring almost blankly at the two members of MI6. Apparently they wanted him to investigate the possibly insane and almost certainly dangerous chairman of a software company. He had announced production of a new computer, the Stormbreaker, which he would donate to every secondary school in the country, and Blunt and Jones thought there was something wrong with it. He would go in posing as Felix Lester, the winner of a competition in a computer magazine, the first prize of which was a trip to Port Tallon to test the Stormbreakers.

It was fucking surreal.

In other words, the people controlling the Special Operations division of the country's secret service were certifiably insane. He would have slid down the wall had his leg muscles not locked into complete paralysis. Just as Blunt was finishing up, he regained his power of speech, breaking in with one of the rudest things he had ever said to a government official.

"_Are – you – mad?" _

"Sorry?"

"What do you mean – you want me to risk my life on a blind suspicion? I'm a _child! _This can't be legal!" He lowered his voice in artful diplomacy, realizing his mistake, but the damage had already been done. _  
_

"Er…" he said. "What I meant to say is…"

Blunt's expression had already darkened, and he knew that he'd just forced the man to bring out a bargaining chip, and if Ian's records had been any indication, it was bound to be an unpleasant one.

"Do you know," said Alan Blunt, "who your legal guardian is?" Alex would have laughed at the ludicrousness of the question, but he knew better than to push the man further.

"Jack Starbright," he said carefully.

"Wrong," replied Alan Blunt with just a bit too much satisfaction at the look on Alex's face. He waved a hand breezily as he said the next. "Ian Rider has, of course, left the house and all his money to you. However, he left it in trust until you are twenty-one. And we control that trust. So there will, I'm afraid, have to be some changes, which we will have to discuss. The American girl who lives with you-"

He knew exactly what Blunt was talking about. "Oh, no," he said.

"Oh, yes." Blunt paused a moment to calm the twitch at the corner of his mouth. "Her visa has expired and she cannot remain in England. She will be deported. You, I'm afraid, will be sent to an institution. There's one I know just outside Birmingham; The Saint Elizabeth in Sourbridge. Not a very pleasant place, but I'm afraid there's no alternative." There was a moment's pause while Alex stared at him, eyes narrowed in pure hatred. _This man…_

Blunt smiled as if he'd won. In later days, Alex would say to himself that he had begun to scheme in his head even as he fumed; that he had been weighing the options before he made the choice that he did. The truth was, he had refused the proposition solely because of that smile on Blunt's face. He wanted to melt it.

Alex cleared his expression, smiled, and said "no." It echoed across the room. Blunt and Mrs. Jones sat stunned, she with a peppermint halfway to her mouth. Alex grinned widely at their befuddlement.

"You see," he said, "you can't hurt me with those threats. I can live without my money. I can live without my house. I can even survive for seven years in an institution, if it comes to that. But," he said, drawing away from the window against which he had been standing, "I can't live if I'm dead. Er, if that makes any sense."

_Uh, no it doesn't. _

He shook his head, refocusing. "I no longer need to be afraid of you," he said, waving the folder. "You have brought me here for the purpose of blackmailing me into working for you. I imagine that you weren't going to pay me or give me proper training, either." Blunt jerked almost guiltily and Alex gave him a laser glare. "Yes," he said, smiling again, and began walking towards the door. "I am going to leave this nonbank and you are not going to stop me."

"Stop!" cried Jones. She gave Blunt a look, as if urging him on. He hesitated, thrown off for the first time in twenty years, and then stood up. He matched Alex's calm menace measure for measure. "There is something I didn't mention. I was going to forget all about it as a favor to you. But now, seeing as you have been so…truculent…" He lost his thread for a moment as he actually ground his teeth.

He leaned forward, placing colorless fingertips on the desk. Alex was frozen in place, hand still holding the folder by its corner. "I wonder if you know what a keystroke logger is," said Blunt.

"_What? _You're not going to plant evidence-_"_ He stopped, horrified. _Of course they would. _

Blunt smiled like a crocodile, replete.

"Really, do you think that the SIS would stoop to the level of common criminals? There was keylogging hardware," he said quietly, "found inside the keyboard of Ian Rider's computer when it was retrieved. Nothing needs to be planted." Alex opened his mouth.

"Please, save your breath. You can't expect me to believe that you didn't know about Stryker and Son. We contract these jobs out to them. " Blunt laughed. "Unfortunately, even the most important parts of the government have impossible budgets."

"Anyway," he continued, "as I was saying, the hardware was built into the keyboard. Quite ingenious, really. The only known purveyor of this technology lives in Britain. His name is Romero. You might like him. He's a man about your age, 140 pounds, brown eyes." Alex choked slightly, knowing what was being implied. Also, how the _hell _did they know what he weighed?

"This man is a certifiable genius, but for all of his technical prowess, he forgot an important detail. He managed to make his wireless keystroke loggers untraceable to the owner. But, he left his signature all over the circuits. Each one of his keyboards has another 'antenna', shall we say. Each one tuned to the same frequency, in a rather uncommon part of the electromagnetic spectrum, the terahertz wave. Each signal is the same, and we traced them back to the source with which they were communicating."

"No," said Alex. There was no way that this could be linked with him.

"Yes," said Blunt, suddenly intense. "This man could be anyone. We haven't released the news yet. He could be anyone," he repeated, "including you."

"No," Alex said, but was interrupted. Blunt leaned forward over the desk, eyes tearing into Alex's own. "How difficult do you think it would be to have a private trial set up for you? Military tribunals are different from those in the public domain. Laws are more strictly enforced. You won't be given favorable treatment for being young. How difficult do you think it would be to secure a life sentence from the judge? The usual penalty for giving away these sorts of state secrets is more than that."

Alex looked down at the ground. It was over. Blunt had won. The paper drooped in his hand.

"So, Agent Rider," said Blunt, "what is your choice?" The question was obviously rhetorical, and more than a bit mocking. Alex knew he had no choice. This man controlled his entire future. He could go to prison for a crime he didn't commit. He could be institutionalized in any place the man wanted. He could be homeless, wandering the streets.

It was sheer vindictiveness and desperation that made Alex do what he did next. His head snapped up, and, as if in a dream, he ran to the window. Blunt was too slow to stop him. Alex looked down, noting that the traffic was still as immobile as it had been thirty minutes ago, and then he watched Blunt's face as he pulled off the binder clip, letting it drop a hundred feet into the sea of cars.

"You'll never survive this, boy," murmured Alan Blunt. His eyes were on the papers, unmoving.

_I'm already dead, _he thought. Fifteen stories below, a reporter for the BBC got out of his van. He had heard something plunk on his roof, and since there was nothing else to do, he investigated. Confused, he picked a binder clip off of the ground.

Aloud, Alex said something with _machismo _like "I'll try my luck." Then, over Blunt's protestation, he opened his hand and let go of _Stormbreaker. _The folder opened and the papers fell out. Some scattered to the winds, but the majority fell nearly straight downward, where a young reporter was standing outside a red-and-white van.

It barely surprised him when the dart sped towards him. He watched the projectile with fatalistic anticipation, wondering vaguely where Blunt had drawn it from, and then it slammed into his body.

The last thing he saw before the world faded into nonbeing (which is to say, everything) was Alan Blunt's face, twisted in rage.

_Wait, _thought Alex, _did he just _kill_ me?_

* * *

**A/N: **All right, you primitive screwheads, listen up! These…are…my…Shout-outs! Since I received a review for the last chapter, notes will no longer be in German, either.

"Like Ivy Round the Oak" and "Tourniquet" by Aibhionne, a fanfiction which is present on this site. You may want to read "Tourniquet" if you're curious about who Romero is. Also, just in case you were wondering, I received permission from the author to use her character(s). I assume the author is a "she," since most people who read fanfiction are female.

_Harry Potter_. Some might say that Evil Dumbledore is merely Normal Dumbledore, but I take a more canon interpretation of his character: I think he's just a brilliant meddler who was forced to make coldblooded choices. Also, I hope you caught the McGonagall quote.

Obviously _Stormbreaker. _Obviously. There is no need to state how obvious it is that I copied most of the plot of this chapter from the parallel chapter in Anthony Horowitz's book.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. This one is not so obvious, but it's there if you think of the looser meaning of that fanfiction: a more rational version of our favorite character, going adventuring and learning lessons. If you look at my story this way too, especially in the "Crawley's Office" scene, then this is a Shout-Out.

_Army of Darkness, _which you should watch if you enjoy absurdity.

**Chapter completed 6/2/2012**


	4. Tales of Babylonia

Chapter Four: Tales of Babylonia

* * *

_I am uncomfortable. I am in a bumping vehicle. I bounce. There is cloth over my face; smells bad. _

_People around me – I struggle with them! "No! - Too strong – Another dose!" a man's voice shouts. _

_There is an acrid smell, probably chloroform, and I lose consciousness._

* * *

Eventually the effects of the drugs wore off and, as if the world was repeating itself, Alex found himself again on a bed surrounded by walls. He closed his eyes for a moment, imagining that he was back at home in his own room, and then he opened his eyes to the reality of it.

Getting up, he found that he was in a bedroom, although nothing like the one he had at home; no light came from anywhere except a small aperture at one end of the space, and it was not enough to see the room's features. Walking with his hands out in front of him, he found the walls and estimated that the dimensions were eight by nine feet, with a grille at one end that blocked a space through which cool air wafted in. At one end there was a metal toilet, and above it, a mirror which he touched when he stumbled over the former; nothing he could use, since the mirror appeared to be firmly bolted into the wall and he couldn't break the toilet into shards as he could if it were porcelain.

The only other thing of interest in the room was the light source, which unfortunately was placed behind a layer of Plexiglas in an alcove built into the wall. It was alright, though; he didn't know what he would have done with a night light anyway. Having found nothing that he could think of as an escape tool, he groped his way back to the bed.

He stared upwards, not at the ceiling, but at the enormous shadow that obscured it, and became thoughtful. When he got into the right gear, he could think relatively quickly of plays that were surprisingly workable without being transparent to the other squad; this wasn't football, but the principle was the same.

He concentrated. Firstly and obviously, he was in a prison cell, and from the little that he could remember of the time between here and the scene in his uncle's office, he knew that his passage had been overland, probably in the back of some false ambulance or some other large vehicle. He'd awakened and struggled until they had to put him out again. He smiled grimly, knowing that he'd given them a run for their money, especially considering that he had been able to see fuck all and was still disoriented from the tranquilizers.

The cell that he'd woken in was a fairly well-furnished one, although in view of what he'd done regarding the government, he supposed it was lucky that it had allowed him to wake up at all. His captors might, of course, only be waiting for Alan Blunt's approval on his execution. He had no doubts that they could get away with it; not now. He only hoped that it would be quick if it happened, and if it didn't…well, he just wanted to get out without being tortured. Considering that unlikely thought, he closed his eyes. It was with a very uneasy mind that he went to sleep.

* * *

After what seemed like only a moment, he was roused by the scream of a bell. He blinked rapidly for a few seconds (what? Where am I?), trying to collect himself, thereby missing the announcement that followed almost immediately. He only caught the end of it, a woman saying something like "please stop misusing the soap," and he was still lying on the bed, blinking, when a dinging sound came from the speaker system and the bar wall retracted into the ceiling.

A Black man with curly dark hair and a short beard stuck his head round the corner. "Coming?"

Alex nodded. He felt the situation was too surreal to speak, and anyway, this unknown man would forgive him for being confused. He got to his feet, still a little groggy from the lack of sleep, and followed the man down the corridor. Before he got too far away from it, he glanced behind him to see that it was still there.

One of the things that Alex noticed right away about the prison in which they were staying was that their section consisted of a long row of identical cells that ran along a wall on only one side of the corridor. It had about twenty cells, most of which seemed to be occupied as, of the people who occupied the hall; he counted about twenty inmates in that number. They were identifiable by the cheerful mint jumpsuits they wore and the fact that they were moving slowly down the hall, glaring pointedly at the ones who guarded them.

Seeing this, Alex felt himself tense and his senses go on high alert. He had to know how much danger was here. He had heard horror stories from Simon of prison riots in which hundreds of people were killed, others tortured, guards raped. His head swiveled, seeking out the angriest ones, and pinpointed one: one man of Arabic descent. He looked to be the most vehement glarer.

Alex felt a tap on his shoulder and started violently, spinning around. The man who had spoken to him earlier was looking at him curiously. "What?" He smiled and started to say something, and then his eyes flicked away momentarily. When they returned, they no longer held a laughing expression.

"You're very young to be in this place," he said instead of whatever it was that he was going to. He had an accent that added a slight slurring to the end of each word.

Alex nodded. "Not too young for the people who sent me here." The man nodded gravely. "And is that not the truth? No one is ever old enough to be imprisoned, and no one is ever too young for those that imprison them." He gave Alex a sidelong glance. "My name is Yasir." He extended a hand and the boy shook it. "Alex."

* * *

For the first time in his life, Alex found himself the most popular person in the room. During breakfast, everyone in the cafeteria came forward to shake his hand. They were inclusive, even solicitous towards him and he heard many of them volunteer to be his guide around the prison. It was Yasir that took the position, though, and he was supremely helpful throughout breakfast, teaching him the best way to eat his oatmeal without tasting or smelling it and other useful things. He had just begun a roleplaying monologue on how best to charm the cooks, when a bell rang and the voice came on again.

Later, Yasir guided Alex to a recreation yard which had plenty of equipment but no anal rape; a welcome surprise, he was sure. He spent most of the hour bitching about the communal showers and not exercising at all. When the time came for the post-recreation shower, he was handed a matching mint jumpsuit by one of the guards, corralled into a gigantic room that reminded him of the gas chambers he'd seen in documentaries, and ordered to strip off.

He felt at first that he would die of mortification, in which case, he noted, his Holocaust comparison had not been too far off the mark. Showering turned out alright once he'd wedged himself into a corner next to the protective figure of Yasir. They all seemed to be mostly avoiding looking at each other anyway, and Alex felt more secure in the fact that if they _did _let their eyes wander, they certainly wouldn't bother resting on him, the underdeveloped white child, not when there was so much bronzed and glistening muscle available. However, when they'd been let out and he had dried off and changed into his jumpsuit, he was nevertheless so happy not to be naked that the loss of his own clothes hardly bothered him.

A rest back in his cell soon followed, and after that, lunch; later there was group therapy, which took place with a nurse, surname Hatchet. Her style was like her name, and as such he would have happily sunken one into his skull by the end of the meeting.

Hatchet conducted "therapy" this way: she asked an inmate perfunctorily how he felt, he told her, and she diagnosed the inmate with a random mental disorder. If anyone disputed her…well, that was what the guards were for. They loomed menacingly on either side of her, as if she wasn't intimidating enough on her own. Alex got away easily by pulling the age card and she left him alone once he agreed with her diagnosis. Soon the bell was ringing and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

At dinner he flirted outrageously with the aged cook, which won him the best piece of chicken and an almost-soft bread roll, which he ate raucously. Yasir sat beside him at the table with a look of distaste on his face, as well as no small amount of envy. His pointed looks and huffing sighs grew louder and louder until he finally dropped his spoon with a clatter.

"_Must_ you masticate so loudly, Alex?" Alex snorted, his teenage brain going off again,and promptly respired half of his mashed potatoes into his windpipe. He choked and Yasir, with a bored sort of sigh, pounded him on the back until he dislodged them. "Hurk…hurk, sorry," he choked. "I haven't had anything to eat since lunch," he grinned. Yasir rolled his eyes. "Of course you haven't. None of us have eaten since lunch, this being _dinner_." Alex reached for the chicken and let his smile fade.

"Actually, I meant to ask you about that," he said, stuffing the entire drumstick into his mouth just to be annoying. "Dis is," he declared through a mouthful of chicken, "a _nice_ pwison." He was answered with another eye roll, but then Yasir leaned closer, looking serious.

"Why would you think that?" Alex put the drumstick down, all jokes forgotten, and thought about his answer while he chewed.

"Well, I noticed that the cells go down only one side of the corridor, that's a nice design: we all have perfect privacy from one another." He waved his hand at the food. "No starvation, that's not what I'd expect. Or sleep deprivation, for that matter. The guards don't beat us. And, everyone's been really nice to me."

"Is that what you think?" Yasir smiled at him almost pityingly, and then suddenly he was turning and pointing at the hall that led to their rooms, one of many.

"You see that? All rooms in every cell block are on one wall. Perfect privacy, you say, but also a clever trick so we are isolated from one another. It may be hard to imagine now, but you'd understand after four or five years in prison, what loneliness really is." Alex opened his mouth. Yasir pointed again.

"See?" A guard was hassling the Arab man from earlier in the hallway, the one who'd been glaring so heatedly. "It is because he, in the last _therapy group_" - (his voice grew sarcastic over the word) -"dared to contest Nurse Ratchet'sdiagnosis of schizophrenia. Bharti never knew how to keep his mouth shut," Yasir went on with a tiny strain of affection. He shook his head as if clearing it. "They don't starve us, or beat us, or keep us from sleeping, because they have something else to hang over our heads. We aren't regular prisoners. We're-"

A guard who had been making his rounds dangerously close to their table swooped in as if he was going to intervene, and Yasir shut himself up quickly. "So, who is this Nurse Ratchet?" Alex asked him not loudly, but a few decibels above normal. "I've never met her. Is it possible that you mean Nurse Hatchet, whose name you confused for hers because you're so _old?" _

It was a lousy quip, not even worth the bit of thinking that it cost him, but it was enough to make their eavesdropper withdraw to patrol another table, his left hand still fingering his gun. Yasir only shook his head. "From one who has read Singer and Melville and Hemingway, I would have expected better. Haven't you heard of Kesey?" Alex goggled at him, but Yasir only nodded.

"For such an educated boy, you are not yet very wise," he murmured, and Alex had a feeling that he wasn't speaking, anymore, about books.

The words haunted him the rest of the night.

* * *

It was around nine o'clock the next day, and he was sitting in front of the television when he decided it: he actually liked being in prison. Yes, the nurse was diabolical and the new insight that Yasir had given him about the placement of cells made the whole place seem sinister, but there was a _television, _and on it, _fucking _Chelsea F. playing!

He'd thought it was too good to be true when Yasir had first told him about Television Thursdays, but now he was sitting on a red leather couch with a fifty-inch screen before his eyes, and he was believing. About fifteen other men were gathered around the screen as well; they leaned on the back of the couch and crowded in on the cushions. A few, in a desire to get even closer to the action, were sitting on the floor directly in front of the screen.

There was an endless dialogue of heckling going on between the two sides, on-screen and off: It went on in two languages, perhaps three. Alex wondered for a moment why homeland Muslims would follow English football, and then he realized that some of them had probably been imprisoned for years. They'd had the time to pick a favorite team.

He watched as the Chelsea supporters cheered on the blues with swears and cries of "Celery!" Those in the room with him responded with equal measure of booing and cursing, in which Alex didn't participate. It wasn't as if he didn't want to join in; he'd always been a fan, and the way they were playing tonight deserved some abuse, but, it was just…his uncle.

If he closed his eyes, he could always remember the lesson his uncle had taught him. They had been standing on the top of a waterfall in the Amazon, and Ian had just been attacked by an enormous and uncharacteristically violent python which he had wrestled into submission. Alex had done the natural thing during the fight, which was doing everything he could to distract the snake; poking fingers in its eyes, swearing at it, etcetera.

Finally, with Alex's help Ian had grabbed it around the neck and, with a mighty heave, tossed it into the forest; it slunk off, quivering. Ian had stood there panting, with red marks around his neck, and then he was suddenly giving Alex the ass-kicking of his life.

Alex still remembered what, in a voice much altered by exertion, Ian had told him.

"Your language is the outward reflector of your personality. It shows maturity to be collected, couth and concise at all times. Swearing reflects a lout. What do you want to be, Alex? A man or a lout?"

When one was hanging upside down and smarting from back to bottom, it was hard to answer any question, but he had shouted "Man! I want to be a man!" and Ian had dropped him. He had been five.

That was the first and last time that he ever swore in front of his uncle, and Alex had, since then, thought himself incapable of using that kind of language out loud. And then _Vialli, _that Italian rat bastard, showed up on the screen, and _be a man, be a man, be a man – _and he really _was _a terrible manager, but he couldn't swear at him, _don't do it_ –

And Hasselbaick found the net again and Alex jumped to his feet, screaming his joy:

"YES! YES! FUCKING YESSSSSSSS!" he roared, and the blues around him erupted in jubilation.

And then Yasir gave him a hawkish look from the corner of the recreation room, and Alex slumped back onto the sofa. "Sorry," he said.

Yasir only sighed in the long-suffering way that he always did. He had done it so much recently that, in only a day and a half, it had become something of a comfort – much in the way of the prison soap.

"Hey, why do they give us soap?" Alex asked Yasir, hanging his head backwards off the sofa. "Isn't it a suicide risk, 'cos we could swallow it to choke ourselves?"

Half of the room looked up and Alex winced. "Er, not as if any of us would do that…" he said loudly, mostly for the guards' benefit. Yasir stalked over, gripping the bridge of his nose with one hand, and with the other forcefully dragged Alex into a corner of the room, where they managed a sort of awkward crouch by the snooker table. Yasir squatted down.

"You idiot…" he murmured. He let go of his face and shook himself off. "All right. Barring the fact that you shouted it to the whole room," he glared at Alex, "that was actually a quite brilliant piece of insight. But, you also didn't notice another thing about the showers." He sat down outright on the floor and placed a comforting hand on Alex's shoulder. "I didn't mean to tell you this, and it might come as a bit of a shock, but there's a measure in place that would keep us from doing anything…"

"Spit it out…"

"There are cameras placed in the washrooms and all of the showers."

Alex's mouth dropped open. He knew he shouldn't feel this invaded; he showered communally with eleven other boys every week, for God's sake, when he went to football practices, but –

"That's just so _gay!" _

Yasir frowned at him and actually crossed his arms, looking a bit put out. "Alex, if you weren't aware, prison culture is _extremely _gay. Honestly, some of us have been imprisoned for years; do you expect us to be celibate for all that time? It's also very insulting when people use the word 'gay' in place of the word 'bad,' or in this case 'invasive'-"

"No, I meant gay."

"-and there's no reason to use it that way." Yasir gave him one last hawkish look. "Be careful what you say, Alex, because, just now, you did not sound very wise for one so obviously educated."

Alex, totally missing the part where he was given a compliment, skipped straight to unraveling Yasir's suspiciously defensive political correctness speech. "Wait," he leaned close to the man, jabbing a finger at his chest, "are _you _gay?" Suddenly he realized that he didn't want to know and cut the man off before he could speak. "Never mind, I don't want to hear your answer, don't tell me, please. It would make it too awkward to talk to you."

Yasir opened his mouth at the stupidity of this, and then he closed it with a soft snap. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

"I want to finish the conversation we had at dinner yesterday. You were about to say that we weren't normal prisoners. What are we?"

Yasir swallowed and tugged at his beard before he answered, a seemingly nervous habit. "All right," he said in a quiet, reluctant voice, "do you know what it means to be remanded?"

* * *

They talked for the remainder of free time, sitting under the table at first. Later, when the guards swooped round again, they pretended to play a snooker game which turned competitive. Alex was trounced, but didn't care; in that hour he learned more about his government than he had in ten-plus years of classes.

There were some very interesting things that Yasir told him; for instance, that _remand, _which he'd mentioned earlier, was the detention of suspects without a trial, and that, in the United Kingdom, prisoners falling under the jurisdiction of the Terrorist Act of 2000 could be remanded for a maximum of forty-eight hours.

This raised immediate questions about _what, _exactly, this prison was, and Alex asked the obvious one. "Wait," he whispered with a sense of growing horror, "does this mean that _none of us have had a trial?" _Yasir hushed him with a nervous glance around them. "Shh, you idiot, what did I just tell you? Remand can only last two days!" Alex frowned. "Then what _are _we?" Yasir frowned, and finally he finished the sentence that had been weighing on Alex's mind since the night before.

"We are, at least most of us, indefinite remand prisoners; our trials were suspended because our freedom would be considered a threat to the nation. Those of who received trials," he smiled grimly, "were given military judges. They're just here for holding." Alex opened his mouth and shut it. "Go ahead, ask."

"Indefinite. That means we're never getting out."

"Yes."

"And some of us are innocent."

"Yes."

"And I'm a child."

"Yes."

_Yes. _

Yasir's teeth had gleamed white even in the darkness under the table, and Alex looked at him; clean-shaven except for his short hair and neat beard, perfect hygiene; there were absolutely no wrinkles in his mint jumpsuit. He looked the furthest thing from a criminal that Alex had ever seen. He glanced up at the men around him, wondering about their innocence, and realized it didn't matter. One couldn't judge these things from appearance.

"What about the convicted ones? You said they were just here for holding." Yasir nodded. "No one knows where they go, but they never stay here for more than a few weeks. After that amount of time the guards come and fetch them." He showed Alex his 'suspicious' face. "Our best conjecture is that keeping them here is too much of a security risk. Although no one knows the location of this place, we assume it's in some urban area, where it would be a bit of a disaster if terrorists suddenly burst out and started knocking down signposts," he said ironically, "rather than some desolate pasture in Guernsey, where our only victims would be cows. No one knows where they take them, but wherever they go, they're never heard from again."

He shrugged. "Personally, I think the convicts are taken to another country, I don't know where, in which Muslims have even less civil rights – where they don't have to bother with the Geneva Convention."

Hearing the word "Muslims" used as a collective descriptor, Alex looked around and realized what he'd known all along.

"We're mostly Arabs, yes, and of those a great percentage is Muslim." Alex turned around and saw Yasir giving him a contemplative look. "I'm surprised you didn't notice earlier; it either means you are not very racially conscious or are very naïve as to why inmates in a prison for so-called terrorists are mostly of one color." He took a moment to frown. "I'm not sure which of those is worse."

"Anyway, though," he gestured around him, "you see that we do what we can to survive, following the trivialities of football and so forth. Most of us have known each other for at least a year."

"So, then, what am I?" asked Alex. " I didn't have a trial. And I'm not a, um, Muslim." Yasir looked at him gravely and with something like pity. "But I thought you knew, Alex. Didn't I say that people here are all suspected and convicted terrorists? You're in remand until you are either released or given a trial, or…" He gave Alex a very shrewd once- over and Alex felt as though he was being sized up.

"You didn't happen to run afoul of any important people in the Home Office, did you?"

* * *

_Indefinite remand. _

Alex sat on the bed, his mouth open in an expression of _distinctly mind-fucked, _or, as his uncle would have stated it, "rather wrongfooted."

Years would pass before he stopped dwelling on what he learned that night. He'd never imagined that anyone, especially a kid, could land himself – or herself – in this kind of trouble, but he'd always had a knack for getting into things that he shouldn't.

He'd not known, not had any idea of what he was playing with when he met Alan Blunt. Now he knew. The man was a demon of the ninth circle, a god in all levels of politics, a major player in everything from Britain's immigration policy to determining who swept the streets.

Maybe that was exaggerating.

Alex took off his shoes. Okay, so maybe not that level of control exactly, but he still headed international intelligence and had vast influence over the Home Office, which controlled all manner of prisoners of the state who fell under the Terrorist Act. He'd dropped those papers unaware of the danger he was facing; it was as if he'd poked a sleeping giant only to find it breathed fire.

Or something like that. His brain was flippant and became metaphorical in the worst situations.

Whatever he compared it to; this one was a 'ten' on the one-to-five scale of catastrophes. He lay down, cursing himself and his luck. _Good job, Alex. You are now the youngest terrorist in Britain. _ Alex rolled over and told his brain to shut up.

How could he have _known _that certain people in the Home Office had the influence to have anyone incarcerated without a trial? Somehow he thought that this kind of information should be included in the curriculum, seeing as not knowing about it could _ruin your life. _In Alex's opinion, the secrecy around the unwritten rule was the only thing more ludicrous than the rule itself.

However ridiculous and obscene it was, indefinite remand was still far from being an impossibility. This being a secret military prison and therefore by definition ridiculous and obscene, it was only natural that most of the prisoners claimed to be victims of remand.

Lastly, and it was just his luck that it applied to him, Yasir had read out a mental list of certain people who had been blamed for the prisoners' unjust incarceration. It must have taken months of talking to fellow inmates, gaining their trust, to get this information, and the result was a short recitation of names. Very short, because very few people had this sort of power and of those, even fewer were ruthless enough to use it.

Alan Blunt was on this list.

He brushed his teeth, changed into a new set of prison pajamas, and lay down with the same dumbfounded expression on his face. He felt unfamiliarity, shock, and indigestion. Hours of insomnia later, he felt déjà vu of the night before, the only thing changed being the thoughts that he was tossing and turning to.

_I am a political prisoner. I pose a threat to the nation. I had no trial. I could be killed. I could be given a rigged trial and stay in the system forever._ _And the worst part is that it would all be legal. _

But even a brain in the fog of terror had to go to sleep, and his more coherent thoughts evaporated, replaced by vivid reimaginings of their subjects. From the viewpoint of a spectator, he watched himself die; he watched himself growing old and bearded; he watched himself being dragged away. Finally, fantasy dreams replaced those half-realistic. He heard wild shrieks. He walked through a jungle and long-toothed animals dragged him; they tore chunks out of his body with fang and claw. The scene changed to that of a church that was also a slaughterhouse and a cemetery strewn with unburied corpses. He felt sick until everything finally disappeared.

He lost consciousness for a few hours.

* * *

This night _was_ different from the one before, because Alex awoke to the sound of whispering. He paused for a moment, disoriented, and that was when the bag was forced over his head. Alex was shoved bodily out into the hall, where he was spun around several times by the hands that held his shoulders. Then they marched him through the building.

Alex tried to memorize the path they took, but it was made impossible by the fact that they repeated the disorientating process at every turn. After a short walk, he found himself inside of an elevator (he could guess this from the dinging noise and the fact that they weren't walking), and then, probably several floors up, he was dropped onto the floor of a room, the bag whipped off of his head.

Certain questions flooded through his mind, some that he didn't dare to answer and others that he already knew the answers to. He looked wildly around for someone in a white coat, perhaps already wearing sterilized gloves, walking towards him with needle in hand. There didn't seem to be anyone there but the guards, who were as nameless and faceless as their positions required.

The room was devoid of any color except the grey of concrete, and he wondered at such a room existing in the same building as his own plush-in-comparison cell. There was nothing there except a…doll? A well-done mannequin? Something that was the size of a human, but far too limp to be alive was tied to a chair on the other side of the room, with a bag that matched his over its head.

At a signal from one particularly hard-faced guard, whom Alex recognized as the one who had been suspicious at dinner the previous day, two others stepped forward and removed the hood. The thing that Alex had thought to be a large doll shifted and moved his head; it was a prisoner, gagged and bound like a holiday turkey.

The man was tall and had pale skin scarred with years of acne past and recent; he didn't wear glasses, but the rest of him epitomized 'nerd', from his Mortal Kombat hoodie to his baggy jeans and off-brand shoes. He looked up, surprised, and Alex saw that he had been crying. He seemed to have been entrenched in a state of apathy before the arrival of Alex and the others and was blinking as if the light didn't agree with him.

The guards drew close to him and he immediately began shaking his head rapidly, his eyes wide; Alex was reminded of a rabbit, suddenly discovered by a fox at the worst possible moment. The man turned his head again and Alex saw that he had good reason to be afraid; he had the worst shiner he'd ever seen, coupled with a bruise that covered his entire left cheek. _The leader of the guards was left-handed._

Thankfully, they didn't hurt the man in front of him; they merely removed his gag, which had been so effective that when the prisoner was freed from it, he pulled in a giant gasp of air as if it had obstructed his breathing. Alex narrowed his eyes. This man had clearly been tortured; to what extent, he didn't know, but he hoped that he had seen the worst of it. He just didn't know what was going to happen next.

He didn't have long to wait.

As the other two took the man's shoulders, dragging him to his feet, Alex felt a hand on the back of his collar. It yanked him up so hard that he choked. Later he'd remember yelping, being given a shake for making noise, and scrabbling helplessly at his neck. He felt like an animal.

Later, he would realize, that was the point.

After that nothing was very clear. Even if you were afraid and trying to stay alive, having your air supply cut off by your collar tended to keep you from responding to stimuli – even if the aforementioned stimuli was a question being barked at you by your interrogators. His hearing was immediately so shot that it echoed around him, and since he couldn't _see _anything through the black spots in front of his eyes, he couldn't well answer.

He struggled for a moment, choking on his own esophagus, and then he was on the floor, with no memory of how he'd got there, and the cement was cool on his face. He thought he'd vomited and realized that the wetness on his chin was only saliva. A noise of disgust sounded above him and he was hauled up; apparently that short respite had been enough to the guard's taste.

His face was held in front of the other prisoner's; directly in front. They stared at each other for a moment.

"Do you know this man? _Do you know this man?"_

Alex said that he didn't. They didn't believe him.

* * *

Several minutes (hours? Who's counting?) later, Alex's face was reintroduced to the floor; he failed to restrain a whimper. A vague sense of disappointment filled him. In the rare instances when he'd imagined himself under torture, his dream self had been braver than this.

The head guard lifted him, asked the magic question, Alex said no, and Alex was dropped again.

This time he went limp as his head hit the floor. He'd _really _thought that he'd be braver than this. Apathetically, he addressed the floor, with which he was on a first-name basis by now. In German they could have _dutzt._

_Floor, _he thought, _my ass is a wad of cookie dough. _He was quoting a film he'd once watched, although he was sure that when Edward Norton's character said it, it was in third-person singular. But it didn't matter, did it; cookie dough, his ass really _was. _This wasn't even Fight Club. It didn't qualify as torture, even; it was merely unpleasant for the sheer painful repetitiveness and idiocy of it. _After a few hours of this, would my ass continue to be cookie dough or would it by that time have become wood?_

(That quote was most definitely not in the film.) He was considering confessing just to put an end to the monotony, and if that didn't make him the single worst spy in the history of the universe, then he didn't know what would.

_Wait, _he thought, _what do they want me to confess to?_ _Oh, right. _

The other man's name was Matthew Romero.

Alex assumed that this meant he was the man who had keylogged his uncle's computer. He'd learned through endless minutes of pointless interrogation that he really _was _under suspicion of stealing national secrets. From the questions they'd asked, he'd gotten an idea of what they wanted him to confess. They wanted him to say _yes, _I bought a keylogger from this man for the purpose of hacking into my uncle's computer,_ yes_, I broke through his giant bank-vault door to plant it in his study, and _yes, _I pose a threat to my nation so_ please lock me up forever. _

It would be no exaggeration to state that Alex thought confessing would be the _most idiotic thing he ever could have done in all possible worlds. _Thankfully, these guards seemed to have failed their Torture and Interrogation class; "torture" and "interrogation" from them consisted of shouting questions, shaking him around by his collar, and dropping him on the floor over and over.

The most frightening thing about it, actually, was the amount of their spittle that he ended up wiping from his face. He supposed he couldn't hold it against them; they hadn't had an Uncle Ian to cuff him over the head for saying "I is" instead of "I am" and so forth. Actually, he probably couldn't blame them for failing as intimidators, really; he probably had a lot to be thankful for. Perhaps they really were pants-pissingly frightening on most days, but this time they'd been given special orders by Blunt to be gentle with him-?

_Alan Blunt, gentle? Not hardly_, he thought. But what could have provoked this change in his policy? He'd seemed ready to get out the hot coals and thumbscrews on – what day had it been? Oh, right – Tuesday, May First. What could have happened to change the man's mind?

He retreated further and further into his mind, and this question, as they repeated their own. Eventually they seemed to get bored, made sounds of disgust that he couldn't hear, and gave him up as a bad job. He didn't even rouse himself enough to see the look of pleading on Romero's face as they pulled the hood back over his head. Instead, he pondered, even as he himself was given the bag, turned around and around, and led back down the hall.

Behind him Romero's shouts echoed into an uncaring hallway, and his only audience was himself – and the two guards who remained. If Alex had been able, he would have seen them smile.

As it were, the newly reduced group led him silently back, and their footsteps echoed on the linoleum.

Alex was taken back to his room, where he waited within a silence pervaded by impatience. The whole prison seemed to be holding its breath. He did not go to sleep, and his restlessness seemed to affect, like telepathy, the behavior of the other prisoners as well. Soon, all around him, he heard the sounds of men waking up. Near him, he recognized movement and heard Yasir's distinctive sigh.

As one, they waited.

In the deepest, most secretive chamber of the prison, Head of Security Nathan D. Green was making a telephone call.

* * *

They came only a few minutes later with handcuffs for his wrists and a blindfold for his face. They weren't the same guards from before, he could tell, although in essence everyone here was the same. The same grimness permeated all of them; the prisoners, the cooks, the nurses, the guards.

Alex looked up and he waited. A soft note sounded and a part of the grille on one end of the cell slid up, leaving a gap of about a square foot; he hadn't known it could do that and he looked up, surprised. The man who seemed to be their leader mistook his surprise as exultant joy and tearful thanksgiving; patriotically, he smiled at Alex.

_Oh, _he thought dully, _am I supposed to be glad that you're here? _He didn't react other than to raise an eyebrow at the man, whose smile faded. "Er, you're supposed to put your hands through the gap, son," he said apologetically. The man had an exaggerated Irish accent, except it had faltered on the word 'son', so that it sounded put on. "We're, uh, setting you free," he tacked on at the end of the sentence, looking almost like he would start wringing his hands.

Alex liked that the man felt uncomfortable. He wanted him to feel more uncomfortable. He could accomplish this goal by making use of one of the nasty rejoinders that were at this moment flying about inside his head.

He had loads.

He didn't do this, however, because he was more concentrated on the effort of raising his head to measure the Irishman's intentions. "Please cooperate; it's only procedure," he said in a more authentic tone. He gave Alex a pleading look, and for a moment it was as if _he _was the prisoner (_don't give in, don't give in) _and Alex sighed, turned his back to them, and put his hands through the hole to accept the handcuffs.

_Why do they do that?_ he thought. What was the purpose of them having to stick their arms through a stupid hole so that were handcuffed before the door even opened? Where would they even go, surrounded by dozens of guards and hundreds of cameras?

Even if an escapee managed to wrest himself a gun, chances were that they had fingerprint identification technology installed, and even if they didn't, what chance did one prisoner have against fifty men wearing bulletproof vests?

Alex pulled his newly cuffed-together wrists out of the gap so the door could slide up.

Considering the fact that they were all supposed terrorists, maybe the purpose was that there was no purpose. Maybe the technology of the mini-door was there just to deaden and disillusion them – just like the isolating alignment of the prison cells, and the way there were cameras in all of the washrooms and showers.

This thought didn't seem to be that overly paranoid, considering that he was thinking it from the seclusion of a secret prison somewhere in Britain.

The men came in then; there was one on either side of him and one behind, holding his wrists. The Irishman signaled and one of them came forward, holding out the blindfold. Alex stared at it, standing halfway out of his cell, and wondered what he would do. This was his moment of redemption as a character. If he had been an action-movie hero, he would have bit the hand that held the cloth. He would have struggled with the guards and shouted at his fellow inmates (all of whom he would have made close friends with) that he'd return and free them from their imprisonment. He could feel all of their eyes on him, waiting for him to do something; he could see Yasir mouthing words at him from the corner of his eye.

Alex looked at the blindfold and did nothing as it came towards him. He wasn't that stupid.

The man let his hand drift down towards the wall for a second, and that was enough. Alex wasn't stupid, but, apparently, Yasir _was. _He watched with a vague, almost dreamy sort of amusement as Yasir pulled the cloth through the grille; watched it disappear and heard the guard shriek in outrage. It reappeared again, farther away, as Yasir reached the opposite end of his cell and passed it off to his neighbor, whispering an instruction to 'hold onto it'. Surprisingly, the man obeyed.

It came about that two of the guards had to go and get another key, as it must have been policy to never bring more than one with you when you were fetching a prisoner, and Alex was left there with the false Irishman and two other guards. "Bring another blindfold!" the Irishman called after them. He looked at Alex then, a bit apologetically, and drew his hand across his face.

"Sorry," he murmured. At this Alex raised his eyebrows. "Good help is hard to find?" The man nodded, giving him a grateful smile, and Alex felt a spark of hope light in the pit of his stomach. Acting on instinct, he changed his expression, widening his eyes slightly, dropping his jaw, and raising his eyebrows. His shoulders were moved forward to approximate the posture of someone frightened.

Having no real idea of what he was doing, he listened to his intuition, and followed it; he knew it was in his best interests to look childish at that moment, so he _looked childish. _The man's expression suddenly softened and Alex raised a mental eyebrow. So it actually had worked, he thought with some surprise. His brain found it even more surprising when the Irishman offered his hand for Alex to shake (which he did so awkwardly, as his own hands were trapped behind his back) and introduced himself.

"Hello, son," he said. "I'm Nathan Green." The introduction was accompanied by a surprisingly fatherly smile, which Alex never saw because he was trying to catch the words that Yasir was mouthing at him. Talking to Yasir, after all, had been the purpose of his entire childish act.

Alex sent Nathan Green one pleading glance. "Please," he begged, "he's the only friend I had here, I just want to say goodbye – you can watch me, I won't do anything wrong!"

Judging by the speed that Green reacted, Alex needn't have said anything at all. "Here, kid. I'll stand in front of you, pretend that I'm holding onto your handcuffs and such. Say goodbye. It's bullshit that you're in here anyway, who cares if I break a couple rules," he growled, more to himself than to anyone else. Alex gave him a grateful smile that might or might not have reminded the Irishman of his young son, Thomas, who was far away in Edinburgh and whom he missed very much.

The man did as he'd said and blocked the others' view of Alex while he leaned against the bars. "Sorry," he muttered, "for everything – I don't have much time to say this and I wish I could say it better, but I'm sorry that you're here and that you're probably innocent, and I wish" – oh God, what did he wish, there was nothing to say – "that I'd gotten to know you better." There was a pause while he gulped, searching again for words and aching suddenly with regret for not making more of an effort –

Yasir leaned close to him and gripped the bars, and luckily he had something to say. His words were hushed and quick, appropriate for where they were and the time they had. "Alex," he whispered,  
"I appreciate the sentiment, but now is really not the time. I have a task for you – no, listen! I believe you're a smart boy, and a good one, but more importantly, you're a _minor, _and _white."_

Alex his mouth to protest, but Yasir held up a hand. "_Yes, _Alex, race still matters to the public, no matter how much the media has convinced you that you're in a free state." He looked annoyed and teacherly, as if it was still Free Hour and he was lecturing Alex on how to properly snooker someone; Alex felt a twinge of sadness, watching him.

"Don't just look at me with that slack jaw! Listen to what I'm saying," he hissed, practically pressing his face against the bars, his face showing more emotion than had ever been seen of him. "This is _important. _Listen to me, Alex. When you leave, you have to tell people about us. This type of prison shouldn't be legal – it should have been abolished in the Middle Ages. But here we are, still imprisoned because _no one cares. _We're not British, we're not citizens of countries in the Middle East – or if we were, they disowned us – we're just Muslim terrorists. And don't you _dare,_" he glared at Alex, "don't you _dare _say that those aren't the same thing!"

"I wasn't going to," he muttered.

"Good. Because that would be lying to yourself about the very nature of your country, of the West. Muslims! We are indelibly connected to terrorism in the minds of Western civilization – we are irrevocably written off as bombers, hijackers, '_jihadists' _because of the work of a few became more and more animated as he spoke; the power his voice carried seemed to echo off the walls and Alex was afraid that Green would hear. They'd been talking for at least a minute, and Alex thanked the powers that were for the incompetence of his security.

"We need you to be our _voice. _Our white, male, Christian, pitiful child voice." Yasir seemed to have no thought for what he was saying as long as the message was heard, very uncharacteristically of him, Alex thought. "The beard – or the turban or the shalwar kameez – gags us. No one believes a Muslim who pleads innocent, and so, although we could probably say it more eloquently, your words are the only ones that the public would listen to. You could talk to the media, reporters – gloss over our religion, please – and people would know about this injustice. Use the race card, too – all much-contributing members of society we are, black men, yes, and victims of racism; they chose us" – he choked and grabbed Alex's shoulder through the bars, gripping it tightly- "randomly because of the countries we visited. Will you do it? Will you speak for us?" His pupils were blown, eyes wild; his knuckles were practically white. His English seemed to have lapsed catastrophically, as if something had broken in him, and it was as if he was a different man. Alex paused a little too long and it was something he would regret forever.

_"Please," _he begged, and Alex knew he had to say yes, because a man like this, so dignified and so much like his uncle, shouldn't_ have to beg._

He made no grand promises; his 'yes' was quiet and punctuated with nervous breathing.

"I," he faltered, "I'll try." If this had been a film, he would have put his face directly against the bars and trumpeted a promise that thundered to the heavens, echoed by a rolling wave of music. Emotionally, he would have promised to return and free all of the helpless innocents from the hand of tyranny.

Yasir heard the yes and his face broke out into a smile. "_Thank you," _he said, and Alex told him to shut up, because the thanks made him feel sickened, like he'd felt when he watched Romero cry, the intermingled tears and snot running down his face and soaking the collar of his hoodie. He clenched his teeth for a moment, then gave Yasir the most reassuring look that he could, and _then _he made a speech that was worthy of a film.

"Don't worry," he said fiercely. "I'll get you out, one way or another, even if I have to expose Alan Blunt to do it. I'll _find _you, if you're moved; I promise I'll find you. And Bharti too," he went on, "and Josef. They're _not getting away with this one," _he growled, "and I will _personally track down _everyone who staffed this facility and _have them put away." _ He would have said more, but then the guards drew close, having returned with the key, and Nathan pulled him away. "Wait!" he called, "I'm not done- wait, Yasir, what was your crime?" The man only smiled enigmatically; suddenly serene, he released his hold on Alex's shoulder.

"Nothing doing, son, sorry," said the Irishman, and this was accompanied with another tug, so that Alex was pulled further away from the grille. The other guards were finally there, then, having wrestled the blindfold away from Yasir's neighbor, and they tied it around his eyes and spun him around in full view of the cell block.

There wasn't any reason to this process at all, seeing as the only viable direction was towards the cafeteria, but, then again, wasn't that the point? Seeing nothing but hearing everything, he walked the gauntlet, and the cheers of the others echoed around him. For once, and this would only happen once, they were all supporting the same team.

Yasir sat in his cell and watched him go, his teeth the only visible part of him in the darkness, and smiled. Alex smiled too, unknowingly; for once he had come in front of a crowd and felt nothing but goodwill. There was one thing, though, that niggled in his mind: he had no idea where he was actually going. He would most certainly not put it past these people to lie to him, even at this late stage.

Perhaps it was not so strange, then, that even as he prepared to leave, he felt that execution, and not freedom, was awaiting him outside the doors.

* * *

**A/N: **Ja, habt ihr gesehen, alle die Geschehnisse dass passiert hatte? Alex ist echt homophobisch, trotz sein Homosexuelle-tendencies. Aber dieses wird nicht ein Slash-fic werden. Wartet ihr: Ich denke, dass die Slash-Fans und die Hetero-Fans beide froh wird.

Anyway, I know that Alex has said and thought some pretty annoying and horrible things in this chapter, the Holocaust/ gas chamber reference being a major one of these. Just remember that, if our thoughts were made public, we'd probably all seem like psychopaths.

Just look at what happens on the internet: **normal person + anonymity + audience (in the case of thinking, yourself) = **_**Total Fuckwad.**_

It's science.

Also, the "bronzed and glistening muscle" thing is very awkward, yes, but I used it to convey something important about the prison. Let's see if you got it before Yasir's explanation in the latter part of the chapter. Also, in case you didn't notice, it's homoerotic that Alex was paying so much attention to these fellow inmates with their _bronzed and glistening muscles. _

Shout-outs:

_1. Ratatouille_, apparently. I shrug; I made a list, but now don't remember where this reference even was in the chapter. It has been several weeks, hasn't it?

_2. The Count of Monte Cristo_. Just a really insy reference here, in the half-sentence describing Alex's lack of something to break in his cell – because the Count broke a pot and used it as a scraper. That gave me the idea.

_3. Fight Club_. Alex's delirious musings are on something that Jack said in the movie.

_4. Guantanamo Boy_, a book by Anna Perera. It is a fictional (but based on true stories much more horrible) about a young British Muslim who is imprisoned unjustly in, yes, Guantanamo Bay. Er, without a trial.

_5. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest_, which inspired part of this story.

6. _Like Ivy Round the Oak _and _Tourniquet _by **Aibhionne**. There is no way to state how much I am indebted to her for letting me use her character. Go and read her stories Right Now. 

A last note: The Terrorist Act of 2000 was replaced later by the Terrorist Act of 2006; the new law increases the period of allowed remand from 48 hours, which is the number that applied to Alex, to 14 days. Bit of a jump, don't you think? Also note that these Acts are only the laws that we know about. In the hidden world of politics, who knows what's going on…underground. Ha, because crypts and vaults and secret bunkers for prisoners are underground. Just like the prison. Oh, and if you're curious about the chapter title, go through the last chapter and see where the word 'ziggurat' is mentioned. (You can use CTRL + F as a shortcut – see, I don't expect too much of you.) It gives insight into where this chapter takes place. Ah, the incredible suspense of it!

Whoever can guess the location of the prison before I post the next chapter gets plot points. Send your thoughts to me in a Private Message.

Thanks, from _To Die Upon A Kiss_

**Chapter Four was completed on June 26, 2012. **


	5. Wheeling and Dealing

Chapter Five: Wheeling and Dealing

* * *

PART I

Michael Morgan Douglass, who was known as "Magic Mike" in one circle and "Morass" in another which had absolutely nothing in common with the first except that certain aspects of both liked to invent ridiculous nicknames for him, leaned against the steering wheel and sighed. This wasn't looking good.

"Come on, now…" he muttered through gritted teeth. He had been waiting in the darkness on Wandsworth Road for over five minutes now, an agonizingly slow space of time made worse by the fact that he didn't know what was slowing the cars ahead of him. If _Legoland _was involved…He shuddered. The fact that the people in the cars around him were equally agitated and demonstrated this fact by practically sitting on their horns didn't do much to calm his nerves, either.

They moved an inch but had to stop for some indeterminable reason, and Michael's follower honked once, an obnoxious, deafening blast. Michael briefly considered calling in favors from one of his friends in the 'Magic Mike' circle, surname being, very appropriately, _Metzger_, but chucked the idea almost as soon as it had come and settled for making the 'wanker' hand gesture out of the window.

And, he thought wryly, to think this had started as a normal evening. He'd tucked the kids up in bed and was getting in medias res with Martha when the telephone had rung... and before he'd known it, he was here because no one said no to Alan Blunt, and his evening was rapidly sliding downhill.

They moved another inch and he saw that he was nearing the source of the travel. There wasn't an accident: the cause seemed to be an orange plastic barrier which had been dragged across the street as a roadblock. As he drew closer, he saw that there were men in front of it, directing the traffic on Wandsworth Road to turn right, onto Bridgeport. He swore under his breath as he recognized them and the expressions on their faces.

"Alwin? Thomas?" Neither of them smiled when they saw him, which didn't bode well, considering that Thomas had been Michael's best man and Alwin was his cousin.

"'S up, Magic?" Alwin asked him guardedly as he rolled up to the two. Michael rolled his eyes without annoyance and told them his part. Alwin leaned close to the car, biting his lip worriedly. "Can't it wait? Couldn't whoever you have to collect stay there one night until all of this dies down?" Thomas came over, looking strained from a particularly galling argument he'd just had with a driver, and pushed Alvin out of the way. "He's right. Bulman took a catastrophic shit on SIS policies with that article yesterday, did you read it?" Michael shook his head and Thomas let out an exasperated noise, but did not allow himself to dwell on it for long.

"Well, it was a hell of a shit, I'll tell you that, but we would have caught it alright if Blunt hadn't been standing directly below with an industrial blender." Michael rolled his eyes, but felt more worried than irritated. Thomas became metaphorical when harassed – it was part of his stoically flippant nature – but if he was explaining the entire situation with a joke, and pretending that he actually thought it was funny,then that meant the situation was even worse than he thought.

He felt a sickening wave of fear sweep from his stomach to his face, which turned pale. "Thomas, Alvin, _I have to go._ I have a horrible feeling that everything's going to go irreversibly pear-shaped if I wait here another moment." He looked up at them and, seeing that they were not moving, begged:

"Thomas, _Blunt. He _sent me here. And if I don't go…" It was an unspoken agreement between the two of them, one that not even Alwin was party to. The younger man watched them curiously while the decision passed between them. Thomas dragged aside the barrier – "Give me a hand, Al" – and the occupants of the cars after Michael's, already incensed about the delay, immediately began to honk their horns in outrage. "Sorry, lads," he murmured to his friends as he rolled past.

The last thing he saw in his rearview mirror was a disturbing image: The idiot driver behind him was climbing out of his car, shaking his fist. Michael felt an icy pang of worry as he realized the man was clearly hoping for a fight.

He hoped desperately that the rest wouldn't follow his example. His friends getting mauled by an angry mob would be the last thing he needed on a work night.

* * *

The young boy shifted and stirred briefly for the fourth time in as many minutes, and Nathan Green couldn't keep himself from glancing nervously in his direction, the same as he'd been doing every time this happened, protocol be damned. He knew that a stint in gaol dispelled everyone's illusions, but the boy had only been there for two days, and Nathan thought he should at least be showing some enthusiasm about his impending release. As far as he knew the questioning had gone off without a hitch, too, so there was nothing for him to be too traumatized about. He'd made sure that none of the guards, say, _O'Melia, _had lost their heads with the boy and decided to hold his head in a bucket until he 'confessed'.

Green knew that some of them would have preferred this to the more circuitous method of interrogation that he had chosen, but he'd had his reasons, not the least of which was the fact that Alex's facial features matched closely with his son's in most areas. A second and only slightly less compelling reason was Nathan's vehement desire to circumnavigate torture, if he possibly could. This moral constraint was augmented by the fact that O'Melia had been appointed Head Guard by Green's superior only days before, and would therefore be heading the interrogation. Giving O'Melia his spot as Head Guard was already, in Green's mind, the most misguided appointment that any director had made since Napoleon when he gave Talleyrand the Foreign Minister position. Given enough time and freedom, he was sure that O'Melia could surpass even _le diable boiteux_ in misuse of authority.

Nathan Green blinked and shifted himself away from his thoughts. He wasn't always proud of what went on in his prison, but he knew that he did his duties with a minimum of cruelty. O'Melia, on the other hand, and Hatchet…

Once again he blinked to force himself away from a barreling train of thought. _That _one always caught up with him eventually, eating him with guilt as it was. He didn't want – he didn't mean –

His excuses were pathetic even to his own ears, and he wondered desperately for the hundredth time if he shouldn't just go back to Edinburgh, renounce his British citizenship, and see his son in person for the first time in years…

He shook himself; God, he was doing a lot of that these days, and concentrated on the matter at hand. He had to forget, for now, because even if the problem outside seemed vastly less important than his own knottier troubles of home and family, there were people for whom this wasn't true, and Alex Rider was one of them.

* * *

Alex Rider opened his eyes infinitesimally and shut them again, realizing that he was still in the lobby, that he hadn't been pumped full of another drug and moved somewhere while anesthetized.

He had been waiting here for over two hours, a period of such unremitting monotony that he would have accepted injected unconsciousness as a welcome alternative.

Of course, he admitted, he would be less chuffed if it turned out that the injected unconsciousness was permanent, an aspect of their agenda of which he was still uncertain. He inferred from their behavior that they meant to keep him alive; they weren't displaying the guilt that he thought (hoped) would precede the killing of a child – although for all he knew, it was something they did every week, and they had gotten so good at hiding their emotions that he would never know what was coming until the needle was in his arm.

This made Alex shudder, but his intuition told him that the trepidation he felt all around him had nothing to do with murder. He had seen, during the brief instants in which he'd opened his eyes, odd behavior among the other people in the room. They all seemed to be gathered around a box in the corner, taking turns listening with headsets to what must have been a radio. In another corner, an agitated Green made a phone call. Alex shut his eyes when the man glanced at him.

Something was very, very wrong.

As it turned out, he only had thirty more minutes to wait before he found out what.

* * *

The arrival had been quick. A middle-aged man had burst in, panting and agitated; Alex was informed that this would be his driver. He was frog-marched, still unaware of where he was going, through a door that led into a subterranean garage that could have belonged to a private collector, except that he didn't see more than ten different models among them, and not one sports car in the selection. They settled into an anonymous black Mercedes, Alex feeling slightly disappointed that there were no Aston Martins among the lot.

He pressed his face against the window and watched the cars roll past him, infinite; eerie. In the car, darkness was almost complete. Neither of them dared to talk; each was in the other's thrall. It was on this paranoid, stifling note that they left the garage and began the long ascent, rolling through an automated door and into the obscurity behind it, then rolling again, stopping, starting, and finally pausing as they waited for another door to open.

It was here, while they lingered on bated breath, that they heard the first shot, echoing like a cannon blast into the night or early morning, followed a second later by the thunder of the helicopters.

Nothing could have prepared them for the scene that greeted them then. There would have been no way to explain quite how tiny the black Mercedes was in comparison to the roiling, screaming crowd. No description would have conveyed quite how large was the field of tents and sleeping bags set up around the base of the SIS building, and quite how still were the people lying prone on the ground next to them.

There must have been hundreds of them, both standing and prone, Alex thought. He could barely make out their silhouettes in the nearly pitch-colored night. An abundance of streetlamps did little to penetrate the heavy cloud of low-lying fog that they stood in. The lying ones, though closer, were equally obscured from him, but with them it was the wetness in his eyes that blocked his vision.

The silence waited for one heartbeat longer, and then screaming broke around them, so loudly that Alex could not tell when it had begun or even where it came from. With it came the thundering noise of helicopters, zooming above, and strobe lights. A tongue of flame lit up the night and exposed the faces of the crowd; one man stood with his arm outstretched, surrounded by a cheering mass of chaos. Above him the source of the light was illuminated, as well as its target: a homemade explosive, headed straight for a helicopter.

It wouldn't have hit, if, a moment before the man had raised his arm, the headlights of a Mercedes hadn't bathed the entire scene in its field of vision, and brought exactly that to his throw.

Which, coincidentally, suddenly had something to be directed at, seeing as the pilot had at that moment chosen to swerve downward and fog the area with fentanyl gas, and thus been illuminated in the headlights. It was also sheer chance that at that exact second, Barry G. Schneidermann had turned his head ninety degrees and been blinded by a sudden influx of light; he was suddenly trapped like a deer in the Mercedes' s headlights and unable to see the Molotov cocktail as it spun towards the windshield and smashed against the glass.

The entire world watched, seemingly holding its breath, as the flare momentarily winked out – and exploded outwards in a wild column of flame. They stared, transfixed as the helicopter shuddered, once, and began to spin, its advancing rotor moving faster than the speed of sound but only taking the craft in circles. Inside, the pilot groped unsuccessfully for the cyclic and only made the spinning go faster. It spun…spun in complete silence, until wave drag became too much, the rotors jammed, and it dropped, with a single sonic boom.

Everything seemed disjointed when it hit the car. There were a series of booms – first, the sound of the rotors breaking the sound barrier, and then an enormous crash as it landed on the hood, pitching the car's passengers upwards until their heads hit the ceiling. Alex felt the car jerk and stop suddenly as the driver stepped reflexively on the gas.

There were a series of hideous _chock chock chock _noises – Alex would find out later that they had come from the rotors as they tore themselves apart on the hood of the Mercedes – and then one of the blades hit the windshield, smashing it apart with an ear-shattering crash. The entire car shuddered as the juggernaut paused, groaned, and rolled slowly off the hood.

The pause this time lasted a full two seconds, but Alex had always been gifted with quick thinking, and it only took him one second to comprehend three things:

The driver's face had gone through the window and he was now practically lying on the hood.

The crowd, which had not noticed the car until previously, was looking right at it. Angrily.

The windshield was smashed in.

Alex launched himself across the space between the two front seats, grabbing for the steering wheel, and that was when all four remaining helicopters swooped down and began to dispense their cargo.

* * *

Several things happened immediately. The crowd shook itself awake and surged forward as one, while the choking, sickly gas swirled around them like the fog which was so common to the city. The driver stirred and woke as Alex slammed his foot down on the accelerator. Then it was all screaming and swerving and choking on gas, and he would be hard-pressed to remember any of it. When he looked back on it later his recollection was so fractured and incoherent that he suspected that it had been altered by the fentanyl. Suddenly the mob was all around him, grabbing hands and filthy screaming obscenities; passionate. He let out a shout and spun the wheel. From the corner of his eye he saw the body jerk and roll off the hood, disappearing into the crowd.

Alex didn't remember much of what happened next. Most of his recollections were disturbingly dissociative, as if they had happened to someone else. He remembered, though, a sense of purpose that kept his posture straight and his hands at the ten and two position; a coldness that filled him and wiped out the emotions attached to the crunches he heard under the wheels. Hands were grabbing at him, trying to give him the same treatment as the other man, justice á la Rodney King or something similar. He shook them off by jiggling the steering wheel.

Days later, even when he was covered in spaghetti and lying on the floor in the safety of his kitchen, he would not be able to explain with any adequacy to Jack how he made it through that crowd. Part of it had to do with his own much fractured and suspiciously trippy memory of the thing, and the other issue was an inadequacy that stemmed from the English language itself.

Giving driving directions was difficult enough: to explain what occurred that night would require words that didn't exist in the dictionary. For example, what word would convey the sort of fear that came from driving with no windshield and five people on the hood trying to pull you out, and while choking on poison gas?

Swerve left. Scream and knock into a brick wall. Disentangle your hair from the sticky mess of blood on the headrest of the driver's seat. Smash that hanger-on's nose before he drags you out and beats you into a pulp like he obviously is dying to.

But the author digresses. What really happened was like a ketamine fantasia, brought on by a combination of the knock he'd received to his head and the influence of the fentanyl gas. Later, when he'd tried them and learned what they were like, he would compare the effect to that of certain psychoactive drugs.

After what seemed like years, the crowd thinned, either from fear of his wheels or the influence of the gas. Alex rode a short ramp up to a connecting road, turned right, and stopped momentarily at the corner. He'd been right when he'd felt something was incredibly familiar.

The SIS headquarters stretched above him, gleaming faintly in the combination of lights natural and artificial. He would recognize that building, all blue glass and white stone, anywhere. People in Vauxhall called it Legoland or Babylon-on-Thames because of its resemblance to an ancient Babylonian ziggurat, and, looking at it, he realized that the name fitted.

He could feel the bile rising into his throat then, and that was when he decided to stop thinking. Opening his mind to the dissociation that had enabled him to escape the mob in front of the SIS, he turned right again, onto Bridgeport, and gradually made the passage southwest.

Alex thought that he must have made a strange sight, a fourteen-year-old driving across Vauxhall Bridge with a smashed front end: on any other morning, he surely would have been pulled over and bunged straight back in prison. But not this night – or was it morning?

He didn't see a single soul.

He reached Elm Park Mansions, the elite gated community that had been home all his life, and waved to the guard, who stared at him but recognized the bleeding, battered boy and let him in.

By the time he reached his house and had parked the car against the curb (he noted with vague pleasure that this would annoy the caretakers), the sun was already illuminating the sky with a raw and bloody dawn. He thought about how appropriate that was for two seconds before feeling his knees go weak and ringing the doorbell.

It was not Jack, but another person who answered. He was in his thirties, with long, blonde hair falling around his neck, broad shoulders and a wide, handsome face. He was dressed arrogantly in grey trousers and a flamboyant purple shirt that was open at the collar to display his tawny chest hair. Overall he would have appeared bigheaded – it was in the smirk lines at the corners of his Mick Jagger mouth, the bling on his fingers and the stupid purple shirt – if not for the fear that presented itself in the way he peered round the door before he opened it fully, and in the way that he was looking at Alex now, lips moving but with no sound coming out. He looked bedraggled: a person who had discovered his own insignificance and was now having a hard time accepting it.

Alex, after a moment of estimation, nodded at the man and decided not to smash his head against the cement, because he had heard Jack's voice and her familiar footsteps coming down the stairs. He could now assume that this man had not drugged his housekeeper and tied her up in the basement.

The man looked at Alex for a second more, then finally stammered an invitation. "I suppose – I suppose I'll let you in, then. Yes." He stepped aside, swinging the door open behind him, and Alex came inside. Jack was there too, wrapped up and sitting on the sofa, her hair wet and with a dozen new lines on her face. She didn't, for once, look happy to see him. _Fuck. She _knew.

"Hello, Alex," she said with a grimace. "We know where you've been. Now sit down. I've got a lot to tell you."

* * *

The time was ten o'clock and the sky promised a glorious day; the rains of April had given way to cloudless skies and the forecasted heat of spring seemed just around the corner. A burnished sun hung proudly in the sky, determinedly piercing even the darkest alleyways of the East End with its cheerful light.

In his room of white, a young boy got up and closed the shutters with enough force to knock the pictures from the walls, except that they had been bare since he had ripped everything down from them the day that his uncle had left for Port Tallon. But this was a story to think on another time.

Sighing, he pressed his head against the glass in his window, suddenly finding that he lacked the energy to cover this one. He was well aware of the similarities between this scene and the one several nights ago when he was dying to go to a party – to escape the house. No state seemed further from him now; _now, _he watched the street for signs of movement, a suspicious character, coming to force him to leave.

The irony was going to kill him someday, he thought, and squinted against the sun which the window seemed uniquely placed to let in. His head hurt enough for him to be hung over, and he knew that he looked like he'd returned from a night, or several, out on the cuff. He wouldn't even be surprised if his school friends believed him – even the idea of swotty little Alex going on a two-day bender was more realistic than what had actually happened to him.

Fact is stranger than fiction, he thought, and was reminded for a moment of his pal Simon, who often applied this phrase to his friends when he was telling a particularly ridiculous story. Alex smiled, missing his friend – more irony; with any luck they'd been too hungover to notice that he'd been gone. Diverted by a sudden thought, he pressed his nose against the glass until he felt the cartilage creak.

_Jesus. Reality _is_ weird. _He'd returned home to find that his action in throwing the Stormbreaker file out of the window had achieved its aim more effectively than he'd ever dreamed, and in more ways than one. He'd realized this as the strange man was in the middle of telling his story, a tale which was more ludicrous than any of Simon's stories and almost as lurid.

The BBC reporter, name of Bulman, had been en route to Oxford Circus to report on the May Day anticapitalist protest, and it had been chance and a spate of bad traffic advice from the radio that had taken him on his winding way past the A40 (which would have gotten him to his destination without much trouble) and onto Liverpool Street, where he became stuck in a jam, so it happened, directly under the windows of the Royal and General. He'd finished up his report and taken the Tube home, where he'd called up every contact in his book. He had been in the commandos as a younger man, a stroke of incredible luck as Alex remarked, and so he possessed an inside knowledge of Britain's military that few others could claim.

In this way, with much wheedling and monetary tongue-loosening, Harold came gradually upon a pitfall. Even Alex, who found himself liking the man less and less as he went on, had to admit that he had courage. With every call, he was gambling upon his trust in the person. Would they give him up to the very people he was trying to expose? And he'd done all this in the midst of a political upheaval. Minutes after he'd reached his flat in Chalk Farm, he'd switched on the TV to see the situation at Oxford Circus dissolve into a free-for-all. Violence broke out as the police made the decision to shower fentanyl gas on the protesters, a motion meant to subdue them but which resulted in more fighting as those in custody watched their comrades drop like flies, unconscious and foaming at the mouth, and began to struggle against their restraints.

By midnight, Blair had announced his renunciation, rebuke, and refutation of the protesters and their 'destructive' goals, but what was more frightening was his appeal to Parliament to increase the amount of remand allowed by the Terrorist Act, and this put Bulman in a sweat. He doubled his speed, and, on nine cups of coffee, he made progress. Late that night, he'd located a private investigator who knew details about the Dozmary case. All he'd had to do was drop hints that an exposé was coming up and the PI had sung like a canary. Sayle had a suspicious past; there was evidence that he had gotten rid of the previous owner of the land on which his house stood in order to speed up proceedings. He was building a private army in Port Tallon. No one knew what he was really up to in his factory.

It was only when he began checking the bit about the Stormbreakers that he met his downfall. The journalist had rung his friend-since-primary-school, Willie, who had recently landed a position in the Home Office, inspecting internet traffic or whatnot. He'd hinted at having found signs of something suspicious in the network around Port Tallon, Cornwall – but then Bulman had made the mistake of mentioning that he was doing some research for a report.

Wilfred had shut up like a clam, totally uptight all of a sudden, and had spewed some rubbish about Bulman "exploiting him" before hanging up. _(Bulman's words, not his, _he thought in disgust_.)_ Bulman, knowing he only had hours, called every editor he knew. Then he gathered two hundred pounds and half his wardrobe into his suitcase and got a hotel room. He paid in cash.

The news broke on the morning of May Third. The fallout was larger than he'd ever expected, for reasons more to do with chance than excellent investigative journalism. One major reason was that the May Day Protests had not only _not _finished, they had expanded, because he'd dropped his own bomb in the midst of a political upheaval; with half of Britain watching their neighbors drop like flies, the population had already been teetering on the edge of histrionics.

The protests expanded; it was no longer about a few smashed windows at Burberry. The original premise of anti-capitalism was all but forgotten; places other than commercial venues were targeted, including major public buildings; landmarks of Britain. Police fought back in kind, and they did so valiantly, making the situation even worse for themselves when they were filmed upon their horses, spraying the helpless-looking civilians with the ever-present fentanyl gas.

It had taken everything short of a miracle to make London civilians overcome their apathy and take to the streets, but Bulman soon realized that having put out the effort to become enraged, they were slow to back down. Videos clogged his inbox and he watched each one of them; they were a rousing sight, urbanes in trench coats engaging an endless army of blue. Pundits had coined a new term, 'viral', for what was happening to the videos. Bulman had ten copies of the May Day Report alone in his inbox.

The politicians certainly weren't doing themselves any favors. Even though London bloggers on LiveJournal reported a surge in protest activity directly after Blair's midnight address, and policemen were being heckled on sight in the more adversely affected parts of Hackney, they still went out on the streets, resolutely spraying their fentanyl gas. Blair was being a positive plonker as well, refusing to admit that anything was wrong, making even Bulman wish that the famously smooth Prime Minister would, for once, be something other than Teflon.

As for Bulman's own status… He'd expected to become a wanted man, just not so quickly. His face and name was broadcast on every station, television and radio, and he didn't pass five minutes without a mention. Blair and everybody else in power naturally condemned him as a reactionary, while those more on the fringes spoke quietly about the apparent truths in his fact-checking. The campaign to discredit him began nearly the same hour; Bulman spent hours listening to his friends call his writing 'fluffy' and 'vapid.' From the far reaches of obscurity came the ranters and ravers, those who, much in the manner of television preachers, liked to rouse protest in any way they could, and, to an even smaller degree, those who called him a hero.

The money poured in. He didn't know exactly how much there was because there wasn't a computer in his room and he daren't check his emails in the lobby, but on BBC One at Six he heard Huy Edwards announce (with clear disapproval) that Oprah alone would probably pay him a million for an exclusive. Meanwhile, every Met in London seemed to have been dispatched. Rioters were banging at the doors of Scotland Yard, and at five o'clock one particularly reckless anarchist had tossed a bottle over the gates of Number Ten. The streets overflowed; even living in London, Bulman had never seen so many people. No one dared to go into Oxford Circus, as anyone who set foot there was arrested, and the jails teemed even as it lay empty. But the people kept streaming in; conspiracy theorists and Marxists were joined by housewives, university students, teenaged kids in their uniforms; all of them there with a mission, and they'd all said the same thing; they'd seen a friend, or a neighbor, or a classmate on TV.

At ten o' clock, BBC reported that a sizable crowd was rioting in front of SIS Headquarters, across the Thames. SIS, he'd thought. The ziggurat. MI6. They would want his head soon. He'd released inside news about one of their private investigations; Sayle had been on the verge of unveiling his Stormbreaker, in the greatest event in computers since the creation of the iMac. Every school-going child in Britain would have received one. Any potential flaw would turn an act of charity into one of terrorism, and this sort of flaw was what the evidence suggested. Sayle had a history of violence, of scheming; people who had run afoul of him had not come out well at all. Alan Blunt had sent one of their top agents, Ian Rider, to investigate his factory in April and yet, even clearly suspecting some terrible danger, they had not demanded a recall or a postponement of the Stormbreakers' release.

Forget remand, he thought. He'd be lucky if he ever got to see the light of day again.

And then something had vibrated at his hip. His mobile was ringing.

He pulled out his shitty Nokia 6110 and answered the call. "Hello?" He didn't want to say his name right off in case…he didn't know, in case it was someone who wished him ill.

"Hi." The voice was American, deepish but obviously feminine. "My name is Jack Starbright. I'm Ian Rider's housekeeper."

"What?"

"I want to talk to you."

"What? How did you find me?"

He heard a noise that could have been an irritated sigh. "Look. Every policeman in the Met will be looking for you. I'd say that the reward would be substantial. Are you so sure that not one of your friends would succumb to that sort of pressure?"

"Well, actually," he started, thinking of about half of them, and she interrupted him with another angry huff. "Exactly. Your address and phone number is blazed across the webpage of that friend of yours… that private investigator guy. John-Francis Vilines, wasn't that his name?"

"Shit," Bulman muttered. "I didn't think…oh God. Oh God." This was when he'd panicked, and Jack had told him later that she'd thought he was having a heart attack, hearing his heavy breathing. She'd calmed him down in a commanding voice that he normally didn't hear from women, telling him to pack up his things and she would pick him up… if he would just tell her the address.

"And," said Bulman, falling out of his recollections, "she was in front of the building in fifteen minutes, shouting at me to hurry." Alex had raised his eyebrows as Bulman followed this statement with a gormless grin. "No woman had ever talked to me like that before. Then she practically pulled my arm off dragging me into her car."

She had brought him to Chelsea, Alex thought, sequestered him in their house! The pitiful boy-man had been living in their spare bedroom since the third of May. Apparently Jack had trusted him enough to tell him the secret of Ian Rider's identity; she'd told him, when they were still sitting in the living room, that this was because she had hoped for the journalist's help in gaining closure about the manner of Ian's death. Alex privately thought that this was about as likely as King Arthur's return, and planned to question her when she was out of Harold Bulman's watchful eye.

As a result of all of these behind-the-scenes ministrations, Harold Bulman was a wanted man, MI6 was the subject of scrutiny, outrage and flaming Molotovs, and it had been reported that the board of Sayle Industries was entering into discussions of a Stormbreaker recall. All of this had been accomplished in three days.

Alan Blunt was probably screaming for his blood.

Alex smiled, fell back onto his bed with a thump, and went back to sleep.

* * *

PART II

One computer, left on and unguarded.

One very suspicious document.

One supremely curious trespasser, and -

And then his hands were shaking on the keys, and he was reading and he couldn't stop; it was magical, like the first time he'd laid eyes on the fiction of Doyle, Christie.

The details were sordid, sticky. They made him cold. But he came away enlightened.

* * *

"Are you sure that you're alright? You slept for over six hours." Jack looked at the boy who was at that moment staggering disheveled down the stairs. His hair stood up in odd places and he rubbed absentmindedly at his stomach while he opened the refrigerator. The entire scene was deceptively normal – and _God, _wasn't that ironic – except that the '44 in the hand of the happy housemother ruined the picture. Added to this was the fact that the usually sparkling kitchen was covered in the debris of several nights: piles of plates with decaying food.

"Damn it, Jack, isn't there any grub?" she heard from her right; he was sounding half drunk as he rattled around in the refrigerator. Normally she would have replied, but seeing as her brain was threatening to hammer a hole in her skull, she only shrugged her shoulder and switched the pistol to her other hand, the one closest to him.

Alex gave up and pulled out the milk to drink directly from the jug, swirling the fluid inside it to make a miniature whirlpool in the bottom before draining it in one gulp.

He burped after he drank it. _Fucking burped._

_Ah, damn, _thought Jack. How had it all gone so wrong so quickly? She looked at the wreckage of her kitchen, at the piled-up plates and the bits of food caked on the table, probably attracting vermin by now… What had she been doing, that she had so rapidly allowed shit to go to hell, to put it delicately? Oh, right, she thought, as Mr. Trouble came in, looking too blond as usual and only wearing boxer shorts. _Him. _

Not that she'd been completely lazy and wanton over her long vacation. She'd been at work on something much more important; _helping _Alex for once, which was a singular occasion in her mind considering that she sometimes wondered self-critically how good she was for him. She'd made nice with a goddamn _reporter _for Alex; fuck simple filial respect, he should be worshipping her for what she'd done for him.

Ah, she thought, with a Zen-mannered sigh, but that was what being a mother was like… you could sell yourself to the press all you wanted, but in the end, the only ones thankful were the rats.

Thank God that Bulman had helped her, she thought. Otherwise Alex might still be trapped twelve feet underground.

She was suddenly drawn out of her reverie by the sound of Alex's choking; she looked over in alarm to find the table bathed in milk (nonfat, organic). "_You're not Bulman!"_ Alex spluttered, and then -

"_Khakhis!"_

* * *

Explaining was, well, _difficult. _No matter what modern American romantic comedies said on the topic, admitting to your child that you had a sex life was _hard. _Damn _excruciating, _actually. And Jack had to do it standing in the kitchen wearing a men's shirt which probably would take on a new meaning for Alex after he realized the source of the stain down the front, which was standing precisely two feet to the left of her.

And, he was grinning. She would get him for that later – "and NO! Not in a good way, you bastard, no, don't say 'calm down,' I am PERFECTLY CALM - " and the most infuriating part was that, not only would he not cease, he _widened _his grin as she became more embarrassed. Finally, she told him that _he _could explain if he was so at ease, and he did so happily. _Well, _she thought heatedly, _it was perfectly alright for men, it made them _cool, _whereas in polite company, women were reviled for doing the same. _

Yes, he had been at the funeral. Yes, he had been wearing khaki trousers at the time. No, he would not get rid of his khakis, they were the new slacks! (Jack felt a little better, watching Anthony lose his cool.) She felt her anger leave her as she watched; he displayed surprising maturity as he explained, even asking Alex's permission. Alex showed fortitude greater than his age as well; he only winced once at the idea of his guardian being sexually active, and asked no questions until the end of the explanation.

"So," Anthony said hopefully, "I hope you don't mind. I like her very much, you see, and…" His voice trailed off as he caught sight of Alex's expression. _Oh, dear, _Jack thought, _this is the hard part. _One of Alex's few flaws was that he was known to be (and his friends laughed at him for this) very, very, very protective.

He stared at them for a moment more. Then he raised his eyebrows. "Why are you asking me?" He shrugged with an indifferent expression. "Knock yourselves out. Just…try to be quieter." Then, swinging the milk jug back and forth, he tripped casually over to the rubbish bin that stood in the corner. For a moment he regarded the negligible amount of milk remaining, as if considering. Then he screwed up his face as if something disgusted him, and, with a single glance back at their astonished faces, dropped it into the trash.

Then, practically whistling for all the concern he showed, he walked out.

* * *

In the way that the universe had of throwing things at a person just when one least expected it, there was a knock on the front door at four o'clock. It was Alex's turn to answer and he went up to it, whistling a bit of the Chelsea celery song as he did. A moment before he touched the knob, it occurred to him that perhaps it was a good plan to look through the peephole, seeing that his house was hiding a fugitive and such, and he did so, proud of no longer having to stand on tiptoe to reach it.

It was Mrs. Jones.

He jumped back from the door as if burned. "Oh, God." If Jack or Bulman or _Anthony _had been around to see, they would have been surprised at the change in him. Speaking of which, where _was _Bulman?

But now there was nothing to do but steel himself and get it over with. "Why are you here?" he heard himself ask in a hard voice. He stood about five inches from the peephole. Mrs. Jones was distorted so much as to almost be unrecognizable. It didn't matter, he could still see that her face held that motherly expression that so frustrated him. It was the one she probably wore before she sent his uncle to his death.

He clenched his fists. There was no way he was letting her in.

Then, she looked down at the ground. Alex distinctly saw her bite her lip.

"I'm so sorry for what Alan did to you, for what it must have done to you. I know I don't deserve to be on your doorstep, let alone let into this house, but I simply"-she took a deep breath, realizing that she sounded rhetorical – "I mean, I'm sorry. I didn't order your imprisonment, and he's my superior. There was nothing I could do, especially with him so adamant: I've never seen him _this _eager to put someone away before, Alex. But I can help you. I can really help you."

And then she said the one thing that was utterly certain to make him shut the door in her face and never unlock it for her again as long as he lived. "I know who killed your uncle." God, had they really sunk this low? Now they were fucking _lying _to him. There was one obvious answer: no. Step away from the fucking door and if she doesn't leave, spray ammonia through the letter box.

He pulled the door open so violently that it banged twice against the wall before it stopped moving. "Come in," he told her.

* * *

In the end, all entertaining was the same, even if it was Mrs. Jones in your parlor. Company was company, and you made company tea and served it on the good silver tray with cream and sugar substitute. So even if it was freaking _bizarre _watching the Deputy Director of MI6 worry at a tea cozy on your sofa, you went along with it.

"This is him," she was saying grimly. She pushed the photo across the awkwardly placed parlor table for him to see. He picked it up delicately. From the corner of his eye he saw her throw the grinning Buddha statuette an appraising glance. Alex smiled behind his hand while he surveyed the picture.

It was good enough, he supposed. Perhaps he would have felt afraid of the man depicted if he'd really believed his uncle dead. But, he suspected, that was all psychology. His uncle had explained the placebo effect to him once: something like that applied to this situation. If you believed you were healing, your condition might improve: if you believed the man in the photograph in front of you was a heartless murderer, your brain would find ways to make him look frightening; it was all part of psychology, your reptile brain trying to keep you safe. And your blood would run cold and your heart would pump faster as you stared into the cold, dead expression in his killer's eyes –

_You're taking the piss, _Alex thought at his brain. _No living person could ever look as dead as that man does. _He blinked. He still saw a killer. _Oh, fuck. _

"Good photo," he said in a bit of a choked voice, and passed the photo back to Mrs. Jones. She took it back with a sympathetic expression. "The man in this photograph is called Yassen Gregorovich. He was born in Russia but now works for many countries. Iraq has employed him. Also Serbia, Libya, and China."

He nodded. "And those countries have never been our friends," he said clearly. She gave him a strange look. "Well, yes. Mr. Blunt says sometimes that negotiating with them is like playing catch with a nuclear warhead." She let out a little laugh. "I wasn't supposed to say that."

He smiled a bit behind his hand. "Weren't you?" She shook her head. The movement was almost girlish. "No. Alan would have my head for that, except for the fact that I'm the only one experienced enough to be his successor. He doesn't know this, but I do almost all of his work as well. Sacking me would be like cutting off a leg." She paused momentarily to stare off into space. "Or a right hand." She let out a small yawn behind her hand. "I feel _so_ very sleepy all of a sudden…"

Alex found himself grinning a bit. He checked his watch. It read ten minutes past four, precisely five minutes after he'd made the tea. _Excellent. _He shifted then, leaning forward. He restlessly adjusted the Buddha statuette until it lay precisely parallel to the sofa opposite him. Mrs. Jones looked confused, noticing his movement. For a moment she regarded the rather frightening piece of nephrite with an unsettled expression. "Could you please turn that in a different direction?" she asked. "I feel that the statuette is staring at me."

"But I can't. My uncle gave it to me when I was ten. It was his most prized possession." He adopted a sad expression that seemed to affect her very much. "Oh…you poor boy. I almost forgot. Ian did _so _love his chinoiserie."

"Right, right," he said, dropping the expression immediately. "But you knew Ian very well, didn't you, having ordered him about for a decade." She frowned. "More than a decade, I think. I always lose count of the years…" Her voice trailed off and she turned her face upwards to stare at absolutely nothing.

"Of course, very regrettable. But," he said, leaning forward, "what was your relation to my uncle, exactly?"

"But you know this already."

"No I don't, Mrs. Jones. You never told me." His voice was calm but urgent. "Tell me what you did. Who do you control? Where have you sent him?"

She leaned away from the vehemence in his voice. "But-I.."

"All I want to do, Mrs. Jones, is know who I am. Please. As a boy…asking about his uncle."

A tear seemed to form in her eye. "He…I think he's alive," she whispered. "I didn't want it to happen this way. But Alan…he's so paranoid that he sees threats in everything now. He had Ian kidnapped."

"My uncle is alive?"

She started crying outright then. "Yes, yes, I went along with it, God forgive me! Ian was taken! Oh, mother Mary, I'm going to _hell - "_

Her eyes rolled rapidly and he began to fear for her safety; he reached out to her, grabbed her wrist and held on until she calmed. Her heartbeat jumped wildly under his fingers.

_"Where is Ian Rider?" _he asked her, leaning close so she was forced to look at him. But it appeared that her outburst had exhausted her: clearly she'd given up something that her mind had buried under years of conditioning. She blinked twice, eyes unfocused. "Why, he never left the factory."

And then her head fell back, and then the Deputy Director of MI6 was asleep and drooling onto his sofa.

* * *

"Fuck," said the boy with fair hair. He stood for a moment with his hands in his pockets, watching the woman with an inscrutable expression on his face. Then he walked to the corner table and picked up the small controller that looked as if it could be used with a ceiling fan.

Frowning, he switched the tape off.

* * *

Blackmail had not worked out as well as he'd expected, thought Alex when he was safely in his bedroom, watching the video he'd made of Mrs. Jones. He'd thought that he would invite her in, force-feed her the sugar substitute if he had to, and make her say her profession out loud for the camera; simple. Instead he'd gotten – he heard her say "factory" and winced – _this._

He'd had the idea to collect blackmail information on members of MI6 when still at the SIS building, sitting in his chair. He'd had to close his eyes to think (he'd supposed that he'd looked to be asleep to people like Nathan Green). It was something Yasir had told him which planted the idea in his head. Alex recalled being shocked, when in prison, at the illegality of it all. Most of the prisoners hadn't actually been convicted, he'd remembered as he'd sat in waiting.

In the end, thinking of his next subterfuge had been very easy.

Alex Rider had not only refused to go on MI6's lunatic assignment, he had retaliated against Blunt's threats in the most damaging way possible given the situation. Alex had retaliated, and Blunt hadn't known what to do with him. This was the great flaw in the plan: Blunt's system of blustering and threatening people into submission only worked as long as they did. The moment that someone refused him, he either had to call his own bluff or throw them into gaol on the most ridiculous pretenses, unless he could dig up something actual on them before the statute of limitations ran out.

The result was almost magnificently ludicrous, and it was this: scores of liabilities for Blunt; people who, if their real reason for imprisonment ever came out, would have the information and the motive for bringing him down. In following through on his threats, the man had created a monster.

Anyone wise wouldn't make those kinds of threats.

But Alan Blunt had, and he'd been forced to follow through on them, and now Alex Rider held the trump card. One interview from him and Blunt, who already looked like a cold-hearted bastard because of the Stormbreaker debacle, would be in The Hague faster than you could say "national secrets," being tried for violating the Geneva Convention among other things.

That was phase one of his plan. Phase two wasn't working out so well.

In giving Mrs. Jones the truth drug, he'd created his own Frankenstein. He'd intended to get the doping over with quickly, mix the serum into the tea and add enough sugar to cover the tang. (As it turned out, he needn't have done this. He'd oversteeped it enough to make the pentathol taste almost unrecognizable, and she'd added enough barbiturate-laced sweetener to make any extra dosage unnecessary. He supposed that she'd become addicted to sugar, judging from the peppermints that she'd consumed.) Instead, he'd gotten an admission of innocence.

He glanced into the monitor that showed the parlor, seeing her sleeping body, and felt almost empty at the lack of hatred that he felt upon looking at her.

Alex _despised _having his anger stolen from him.

He almost wished that he still had the comfort of knowing her as an enemy. Now everything had shifted. He couldn't tell if she was friend or foe, anymore, and the uncertainty made him nervous.

He'd intended to manipulate her. Well, he'd gotten what he deserved.

She'd forced him into the Stormbreaker mission, and she'd done it while half-unconscious. Without even trying, she'd effectively made it impossible for him to refuse.

If he ever wanted to see his uncle again, he would have to go to Port Tallon.

* * *

**A/N**: Confused yet? You should be.

Alex did not have a normal childhood. Just suspend your disbelief for now. Also, pretend that it is not totally ridiculous for anyone to imagine drinking sodium thiopental. Explanations will come soon. Sorry it's been so long, but I really have been busy. And I've worked so hard! I've been staring at my monitor so long that my vision is blurring! By the way, I hope you read all the stuff with Bulman. He's important. And Anthony…you may assume that he is Khakis from the funeral. Also, where has Bulman gone? Who is the trespasser, reading things off of someone's computer? What's going on between Alex and Jack? And, most importantly, how are they going to use the parlor with Mrs. Jones sleeping on the sofa?

Shout-outs:

_Soldier's Poem_ by Little Miss Lover (a great but discontinued story, check my profile for a link if you haven't read it already)

_Magic Mike_

_James Bond_

_Little Brother _by Cory Doctorow

_Napoleon_

_Chekhov's gun_

**Chapter 5 was completed on August 26, 2012.**


	6. Truth Tellers

Chapter Six: Truth Tellers

* * *

PROLOGUE

_"Damn," he muttered under his breath, realizing what was bothering him; realizing what this reminded him of._

_Jack was going mad again._

In fact, Jack had been behaving rather oddly lately, lately being the past year. Sometime in June of 2000, she had undergone a change in demeanor that was as dramatic as it was abrupt. Ian and Alex had left together for a short camping trip in the Forest of Dean, and when they came back she had been a different person. It had been a bit jarring to return home and find that Jack, who had been covered in spaghetti the last time he'd seen her, was suddenly an agoraphobic deaf-mute.

She had started spending long periods of time locked in her room, listening to the same music over and over. At first Alex had chalked this up to the recent release of the Marshall Mathers LP, but he eventually admitted that one could only listen to Dido's loop on "Stan" for so long without becoming depressed. (Although, he thought, he might be considered biased; he much preferred the sweet harmonies of the Backstreet Boys to violent, self- aggrandizing _hip hop_. )

At first, she continued to speak to Alex, though with not nearly the frequency, volume or cheerfulness of before, but eventually her silence extended to her interactions with him, as well.

Her condition deteriorated to the point that she no longer made any noise when they were there and only left her bedroom to get food that she would bring back, and to dispose of the wrappers, which she did in the middle of the night; he had often been woken up at two or three in the morning by the sound of cellophane crackling. Six months passed before Ian finally took matters into his own hands.

Afterwards, Alex would always ask what he had done to cheer her up and Ian would only smile and say something about "communication," and forever after, Alex could never squeeze anything more out of him, no matter how hard he coaxed. He knew that whatever Ian had done, it had worked; whatever had happened on November 21 while he was out buying the Black and Blue album, it caused a change in Jack that was as abrupt and extreme as the first. By the end of the day, she had come out of her room and smiled at them both; and by the end of the week everything seemed to be back in place, except a broken latch on her door that had had to be replaced.

Since then, they had not once mentioned Jack's six-month depression; he had only found out its cause because he had overheard a conversation between Ian and Jack; when he'd repeated what he'd heard to his uncle in private, it was confirmed; the cause of Jack's depression was early menopause.

Alex supposed this was plausible, considering how much she loved to play with him and Tom, especially when they were small, but his mind was still somewhat skeptical: how could anyone, even if they were a barren woman with motherly inclinations, even if they were slightly masochistic, spend _that much time _torturing herself with pictures of the babies she could never have?

Nevertheless, he made no vocal objection to the flaws in this story, and for the most recent year of their cohabitation, Jack had been behaving fairly normally until Ian left for Israel in January. Alex had a feeling that her extreme promiscuity over the last few months had something to do with worry for Ian, although he had not the slightest inkling of why screwing around would alleviate it. She had brought home one man every week for almost three months. To her credit, though, they weren't all different; she wasn't _that _reckless. She had, in fact, "dated" the same one for the entire month of March.

Looking at her, one could not tell the difference. She was as industrious in May as she had been in May of 2000 and all of the years before; her smile was still as wide and friendly as the one she had worn in 1994, when she had arrived upon their doorstep.

Nothing was negatively affected by these nighttime trysts, so Alex had decided in January that he would not tell either of his housemates what he knew. Jack Starbright was an extraordinary woman and didn't deserve to be censured. Anyway, it wasn't as if he was hiding anything; Ian wouldn't care one way or the other.

* * *

The scene could have come from a movie, or maybe one of Alex's more psychedelic nightmares. They were placed around the glass table in the dining room with Jack at the head, her back to the sliding glass door that led to the garden. The faint dregs of daylight leaked from the patio into the room, wreathing her flaming hair in an unearthly halo; outside, the view was dominated by the jungley shapes of leaves. To her right, Mrs. Jones, sitting one place away from her; understandable. To _her _right, an empty chair. Alex sat at Jack's left hand, facing the gigantic framed palm leaf that Ian had brought back from Thailand or somewhere.

They were all, all of them, waiting, frozen in time, ensconced in their own little worlds of boredom and impatience, Jack staring at the clock, her ears intent on any noise from the level above, avoiding at all costs the glare of Alex (who had been intent on staring stonily at her for minutes), and the frequent, entreating glances of the captive Mrs. Jones.

There came a series of loud thumps from above, one "Ouch!" and then a noise of friction, as if someone were dragging a heavy object effortfully across a carpeted floor. A few moments passed and then Jack's beau strode into the room, his slightly elevated rate of breathing the only evidence of any exertion.

"That-twat," he said, low in his throat. He seemed to be in something of a temper, Alex thought, as he watched the man trot around the table and practically yank his chair from under the table. He gave Jack a meaningful look, as the others watched curiously. "We'll talk later," he assured her in a dark voice, and she nodded, seeming worried.

Mrs. Jones let out an audible shriek, and Anthony turned all the way around in his chair to stare at her. "Bless you." Alex's interest grew as he watched her reaction; she seemed to be terrified, or possibly shocked beyond belief. Her grip on the fork was so tight that her knuckles were turning white.

_"Anthony – Sean – Howell!" _she cried, almost in the way that a mother would chastise a child, "Where the _hell _have you been for _fifteen years?"_

* * *

Hours Earlier

He'd hidden hastily in the closet when the boy came upstairs. His heart had still been racing from what he had just read, but he kept his breathing quiet and watched through the small space between the door and his frame as the boy found the laptop which he'd left on in his hurry to make himself scarce.

Oh, _fuck,_ thought Harold Bulman.

He would have gone downstairs when Alex left again, but he heard the boy's footsteps withdraw into the kitchen. They would easily hear him coming down the stairs, so he stayed where he was, immobile.

* * *

A few hours before dinner

She didn't understand why she'd done it, thought Jack, looking at the man who had only just become her lover, even though they'd been spending nights together for months. Maybe it was just her body succumbing to the ridiculous level of attraction between them. Or maybe it was a fully calculated move on his part, finally deciding to seduce her now when she'd been willing since January.

_ God,_ she thought, _I'm as paranoid as Ian. _She shook her head. The worst part was, with Anthony, you could never tell. She pulled the sheets close around her and absently stroked his hair. At least his criminal history made him uniquely suited to sneaking around, she thought. Although, recently, she wasn't sure that she was fooling Alex. The tape they'd made – God, that had been awkward, sitting on her bed one day when Alex was out, creaking the springs and fake-moaning – well, they'd used it continuously for months. _Stupid! _Jack told herself. Of course Alex knew! Probably it was only sheer Britishness that kept him from calling her out on it.

It became more and more obvious as she thought about it. She'd been behaving oddly since 2000. He had to have known that something was up, at least, if he hadn't guessed by now that all of Jack's beaus since January – the librarian, the man in khakis, and the plumber – had all been the same person. The plan looked more ludicrous with every passing minute.

She made no sound as she regarded him, but if a person could sigh silently, then she made such a sigh with her whole attitude.

This was the problem with people. Even if they broke into your house, tried to kidnap your almost-son, and escaped into the night after leaving you their phone number, you still loved them.

She'd called him only two weeks after the home invasion. He'd been staying in Hackney, right under everyone's noses. Twenty police had been on his trail and they still had been unable to find him. She'd arranged their meeting to be on a day when Alex was away, sleeping over at Simon's.

She'd met Anthony again at a café in Whitechapel. She'd worn all-new clothes at his request (apparently the others might have been 'tagged') and they'd eaten inside, at an obscure booth table in the corner. He'd introduced himself as someone from the shadier side of Ian's business; a safecracker.

Jack couldn't quite recall who'd first had the idea of the keylogger, Tony or herself, but it didn't matter. They made a plan; she would enter Ian's office herself and use the code she'd memorized when Ian had told it to them over the phone, the code which he'd given them after they called him, in a panic, with an intruder in their house and breaking through the barricade they'd made on the stairs, the code which he only gave so they would have a place to be safe –

Jack put her hand to her throat, and it took a while before she could breathe again. She wondered if her guilt would ever become thick enough to choke her. Sometimes she thought it would be a welcome escape. _But you weren't safe, _her mind reminded her mercilessly, _he was about to come in; you could hear him scratching at the door. And that was the second part of the plan._

This was what the other part of the plan hinged upon: Tony was a master safecracker, the kind who stood out from his peers the way a bank vault door did among combination locks. He would break them back into the study once he came back and changed the combination. They would meet every weekend-night and put on the sex tape – it had made sense at the time, for what else, he had said, would two people who made such noises be doing?

It wasn't as if she hadn't noticed the plan's flaws. It was just that she looked past them, desperate as she was for purpose, for an escape – but she couldn't, couldn't think about _that _now, with everything crashing down around her ears.

She remembered only vaguely sneaking into the study after sending Alex out to buy the latest _Backstreet Boys _CD. It had taken only a few seconds to remove the keyboard and replace it with the one that Anthony had purchased from a disreputable shop somewhere in the East End; then she would withdraw, power up the keylogger, and read everything Ian typed from the moment he got home.

After that, she remembered, she'd spent a lot of time listening to Eminem. It just got her going.

She looked Anthony over, feeling a familiar mixture and love and disgust rise up in her at the sight of him. He had no idea how close she'd come to turning him in.

When she'd read the first string of words that her keylogger sent her…the sentence that confirmed that he'd been lying to them for years…she'd been _mad_ at Ian. Furious, in a word. She'd spent most of her time in her room, not talking to him, wallowing in her overblown feelings of betrayal. (Later, she recalled, she'd extended this silence to Alex, suspecting that _he _had been a part of the deception, a fact that she still felt shame for).

He'd tolerated this for six months. To his credit, Jack thought, he'd been gone for much of that time and didn't know what she'd been doing. But he was around just long enough to realize that something was very wrong, and in about the middle of November, he'd literally kicked in her door. Alex had noticed the broken latch and been quite suspicious, but she thought that he'd accepted the lie they'd fed him, that she'd reached menopause early. Smaller things had caused greater women than her to fall into a depression.

She thought about Ian again, how he'd smashed in, told her he loved her, and begged – _begged _– her to tell him what was wrong. She could still remember the look of desperation in his eyes. She'd told him some of what she knew – that she'd found a revolver in his bedside table, and, suspicious, she'd listened in to one of his telephone conversations. It wasn't all a lie. Some of it had even happened, though not quite as recently as she let him believe: she'd known about the gun for years. In fact, it was the sign that put her on the trail of Ian's secrets. She let him believe that those two things were all she knew, and then she threatened to leave him.

He'd started crying then. The bravest man she'd ever known, who' d barely flinched when she'd dropped the iron on his hand that one time, was leaking tears and croaking that he loved her, loved her, _loved her_. He'd promised to leave the business and abscond with her and Alex to France, fake his own death. They planned it for the day of his return from a mission in Port Tallon – to check out 'that maniac, Herod Sayle'. He'd dropped hints that it had something to do with the computers that he was going to release soon - Stormbreakers, weren't they? She hadn't thought much of it at the time.

His next mission was to Israel, not Port Tallon. She was more than irascible. She was apoplectic, volcanic, fucking _incandescent _with rage. He'd promised her that he wouldn't accept anything until January of 2001, when he was set to leave for Port Tallon: the plan had been that he would complete it, set a fast course for London, swerve into a guardrail at some point and fake his death. Instead he went on this cockamamie farce of a reconnaissance mission to Israel, which didn't _need _to have him and didn't have to (Jack felt herself growing hot all over as she thought of this) and when he came home, he acted like nothing had happened.

And then he had fucked off to Cornwall and on the way back was when it finally happened. She would have thought it part of the plan had there not been one tiny detail that caught her eye:

_Banker dies in freak car accident with Stormbreaker shipping van. _It was so simple: he was dead. Sayle had caught on. He was just – gone.

She was sure that she would never, for as long as she lived, understand what got her through those first few days. For a while there she'd lived every moment feeling like she was going to throw up. Now it was easier; memories faded a bit. It had been almost a week since she'd gotten the news.

Jack turned her head very slightly to her left, trying to memorize Ash's pale features, his dyed blond hair, his nose which had been broken at some point. _He _helped with the grief, somewhat. Sex helped as well.

She'd almost turned Ash in one evening in 2000, the night before they were to meet and set the plan in motion. She still remembered the feeling of lying awake, thinking about what she was about to do and feeling self-hatred thick enough to choke her. She'd even picked up the phone and started to dial the emergency number, but then she'd stopped.

Pure terror had swept over her.

She'd arrived on the doorstep of the Rider family in early 1994, wearing a ragged green dress made of something that looked like several rice bags stitched together, clutching the latest Elm Park classified in one hand and her life's possessions in the other. When Ian had tried to shut the door in her face she'd stopped it with her foot and asked for sixty seconds to explain in which she managed to convince the reticent banker to let her into his house and care for his nephew. She'd been there ever since, etc: Everyone knew about how she had come to Chelsea. Ian loved to tell the story.

But that wasn't the whole truth of it. What was _true _was that she had been starving when she'd dragged her single bag out of the mud behind the church and began the trudge across to the prestigious gated complex where the Riders lived. Her other two bags, which had held her money and her clothes, had disappeared after a night in a very shady hotel. Even this, however, was preferable to the treatment that she received at Ian Rider's door.

It took more than mere explanation to get a MI6 operative to hire you as a nanny for his only family in the world. Ian Rider had faced her with that cruel gaze of his, and he had forced her into a promise which not only ruined her life, but that of her parents, and tied her fate inextricably to his own and that of one small boy…

* * *

"It's illegal to trespass on private property, you know. I believe the same is true in the place from which you came?"

Snarky. Insinuating.

"I- I just need a job. I'm an excellent caretaker, and I happened to notice the advertisement in the classified section of this newspaper-"

"Please. What happened is that _you _discovered a newspaper that the wind had blown off of someone's front steps, or perhaps you were sleeping on it and didn't notice until later" - he went on, ignoring her noise of outrage- "and, opportunist that you are, decided to climb over the fence and try to earn some easy money."

She stared at his unctuous expression, all self-satisfied idle rich, and hated him more than she had ever hated anyone. "You know nothing about me," she told him in a voice that sounded similar to the hissing of snakes, "you pompous, overblown, chauvinistic…." And her voice trailed off, because a child had come to the door.

"Please don't shout at Uncle Ian," he told her quietly. "He may be a pillock at times, but really he's just worried about me."

Numbly, Jack felt herself kneeling down. "Sorry," she told the little boy. He smiled at her. "Are you going to be my new nanny?"

Abruptly, Uncle Ian tried to place himself between Jack and the boy; she stood up and backed away, finding herself blocked. "No, Alex," Ian was saying.

"-but I want her to be my nanny! She's nice, and with a proper bath, she won't smell."

"Alex."

"She's trustworthy. I can tell."

After this short conversation, the boy disappeared into the house once more.

Ian turned to face Jack, who had been waiting on tenterhooks for success or failure.

"Very well," he said. "I'll let you in. But"-he grabbed her arm as she made to pass him-"you must never leave." His eyes held the look of a desperate man. They gave her pause.

"I need someone here. Alex is all the family I've left, and soon I won't be around to take care of him." His face crumpled. "I need someone I can trust here. I don't trust _you, _but Alex does, and it doesn't matter anyway, because I've lost so many nannies. If anything were to happen to me…I need to know that he won't be alone."

"Sir-"

"Stay." He held onto her arm even as she tried to shake it free. "Please don't leave like the other ones."

"Why?" She said this with eyes narrowed. Just what about this family was so horrible?

"I'll give you a place to stay, no rent, free and clear. 100 pounds monthly outside of whatever you need for groceries and cleaning supplies. Just-stay."

She pulled her arm from his grasp and picked up her suitcase. "Make it two hundred."

"Done. But if you ever hurt Alex…"

She'd stopped in her tracks then , spun around. There was a brief moment in which she considered flinging her suitcase. "I wouldn't dream of it. I thought I'd need the extra money in case Alex needed to make a speedy getaway. From _you." _

Then she turned and walked up the stairs to the room which they had prepared for her.

* * *

Jack surfaced from her imaginings. It was difficult, but in time she returned to herself. She always felt amazed when she thought of that meeting; how that initial chilliness had ever turned into love was something which was beyond her.

Love hadn't helped Ian, in the end. She'd put down the phone, let Ash go free another night, and kept letting him go free, because thinking of another year trapped in Chelsea, seeing her parents only once every few years – even if she did love Alex and even Ian – made nausea rise up in her stomach like a wave.

Jack had always enjoyed being an emancipated woman, and now she was truly free for the first time in years. She only hoped that her newfound freedom wouldn't turn into a curse.

* * *

Dinner

"Fuck it, I'll bite," said Jones. She was clearly drunk and slurring her words. "How is it that a fourteen-year-old boy gets the best of me, and that a missing-presumed-defected former operative of MI6 is sitting at a dining table in Chelsea?"

Jack and Ash looked at each other across the table, not noticing how Alex watched them. Jack was in the process of trying to get Ash to do something without using sound or physical cues.

"Tell me," she mouthed. "Tell me what's wrong."

Ash rolled his eyes. "Take care of Jones, will you, Alex?" Without waiting for a response, he swept out of the room with Jack on his heels. Alex glanced at Mrs. Jones, their prisoner. She appeared to be warbling _La Marseillaise _with her wine.

"Stay," he told her, and tiptoed after the two. He had to know what was up.

What followed was a short and very frantic argument held inside the linen closet. It appeared that Bulman had been found spying on the contents of Jack's computer. "I don't know what he saw," whispered Ash, but he had an archive on Port Tallon open on the screen when I walked in."

"And what did you do?"

"I knocked him out. It seems like…he'd been hiding in the closet for hours. The typing archive was opened at seven o'clock, and closed at ten. But the Port Tallon files were opened at ten thirty, closed fifteen minutes later, and reopened at ten fifty…"

"Right before we got back. But then…when we came back at eleven, Bulman had gone out. Alex said he'd been out since around seven. That can't be right."

"The closet door was open when I found him."

"Oh God. Do you think he was hiding in the closet when we were…?"

"But wait. Alex said that he saw Bulman come downstairs and go upstairs right before ten fifty…but, why would he close the files and reopen them? Maybe it wasn't just him. Maybe it was…"

And, they said in unison: "Alex."

The boy in question turned and snuck back into the dining room.

* * *

Telling the truth was hard, but it had to be done, and it was sort of a relief, not to have to lie again. They'd all had a nice sit-down chat in the lounge, leaving Mrs. Jones reeling and dribbling in the dining room, while Bulman was tied to the bedstead in Jack's room. They could still hear vague thumps and his muffled cries for help.

"So," said Alex. He and Ash were facing each other, gazing at one another in unfriendly fashion across the coffee table.

"So."

"I can't believe you and Jack conspired to steal government secrets without my input," he muttered darkly.

"_I _can't believe that you read our secret files," replied Ash, equally dire. "And that you drugged the deputy chair of MI6."

"It's not as if she'll be permanently brain-damaged or anything. She won't remember a thing when she wakes up."

Ash glowered at him. "And what, exactly, are you going to do when she wakes up?"

Alex grinned. "Well, I was planning to roll her back into her car, leave it at the gate, and let her think she fell asleep."

Ash's mouth dropped open. "No. There's no way that would work! We are _not - _do you think she'd actually believe– "

* * *

_All's well that ends well, _thought Jack, watching her boys - the phrase made her heart twinge, her _boys_ - roll Mrs. Jones up a makeshift ramp improvised from a piece of plywood and arrange her in her car so that she looked like she could be sleeping. She'd followed them to the gate, and this is where they left her now, having driven the regulation MI6 Mercedes to the place where one could exit the community.

"You have to be joking," she heard Ash mutter for about the fourth time. Jack herself had no such worries. She had complete faith in Alex and his judgment. Although – news he had given her tonight meant that she had cause to worry. He would be leaving her soon for training in the Brecon Beacons, and then Port Tallon, for Mrs. Jones had, under the influence of the drugs (she still didn't know what Ian had been thinking, letting Alex have truth serum) revealed Ian's true location: He had never left Sayle Industries.

Jack knew that she should have been more worried; it was just that, no matter how much her empirical brain told her the danger that he was in, she couldn't help believing that Alex would come out on top, just as he always had.

She just hoped that he would remember to bring a toothbrush.

* * *

**A/N: **This is an important chapter: It gives some background into how Ash met the family (he was trying to get into their house) why Jack's been acting so strangely (stealing Ian's MI6 details) and also, wrapping up the stuff with Mrs. Jones and the truth serum. I'm sorry that things have been unclear. Just remember: Jack met Ash when he invaded the Rider home. She called Ian so Alex and Jack could get into the office using the combination and be safe. Jack memorized the code and got in before Ian changed it, so she could install a keylogger. Alex got in, too, and read many of Ian's files but couldn't access them after Ian changed the password.

Jack and Ash continued to break into Ian's office every available weekend, using Ash's safecracking skills, and Jack retreated into herself, appearing depressed, because she was obsessed with reading the MI6 files sent to her through the keylogger.

Also: Michael Romero, who sold it to them, had it set up to send to his email as well as that of the buyer. Alex was accused of being the person who installed the keylogger, and was thrown into remand for two days with Romero, whose status remains unknown. Alex now knows several details about MI6, Alan Blunt, Mrs. Jones, Ian Rider and the Stormbreaker affair that would bring the organization down if they ever got out.

Bulman is tied up to the bed in Jack's room, having been caught snooping on Jack's laptop.

I hope this is sufficient.

**Shout-Outs:**

Michael Romero is a character from _Tourniquet _by Aibhionne.

Thanks:

To Die Upon A Kiss

**Chapter 6 was completed on October 21, 2012.**


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